Delicious Vlish

Casting strong daze and then mowing stuff down with reapers leaves you with an immensely satisfying tingly evil feeling. Plus, it is surprisingly cheap and effective on your energy reserves.

Plated bugs do not cause poison damage.

Or you use the ALL POWERFUL burning spray spell, which does acid damage. Searer and artillas no longer do acid damage. Which stinks. Seriously people, give clawbugs a try.

If you go with only cryoas or cryodryaks, you will have problems. Best to run with a mixed pack.

War tralls resist everything now. Magic, fire, cold, and physical damage. This is why I stated that a mix was good.

What about them? What are you asking exactly?

Poison and acid can be near neutralised by having higher endurance. Lightning aura can be cured with magic or by having regeneration cast, as well as a few resist items. (Vital)

This conversation is probably better off in the G4 area... But yes, missile weapons are great. To save energy, cast daze and use batons with venom or acid. Pew pew pew!

Cryodryaks are probably the best creation for the endgame. Lots of monsters resist physical, way to many monsters resist magic or are near immune to it, and drakons aren't overly impressed by fire. Cryodryaks and their ice breath damage almost everything. Always a good thing to have one or two in your pack if you can shape them. War tralls started off as absolutely lousy, but were changed. Now, they resist just about everything, including cold damage, and do a fair bit of physical damage at range. I'm not overly impressed by the damage. It is good, even impressive at times, but the real purpose to a war trall is that they can get in the neighborhood of 1k hit points with little effort, and they are exceptionally sturdy and difficult to kill distractions. They don't need a baby sitter and can be depended on to hold the line. (In a bottle neck sort of situation)

Er, no. It really isn't that great of a strategy. Mix it up a bit. A few wingbolts and a few war tralls. Maybe a cryodryak.

For those battles you listed, you want some battle magic, plenty of it, and a nice sharp sword too. Mental magic works best against swarms and mobs. Singular battles require different tactics.

Something isn't right here. I can get more hit points in this game with a Servile than I could in G4. I know during testing, the base was changed, giving all of the characters more health. I'm not good enough with numbers to understand all of this though. I do know that it is possible to get around a 1000 hit points now though, and actually break 1000 with Essence Infusion, or whatever it is now called, that used to be Augmentation.

Originally Posted By: Orthologer Royal They work when I edit your previous post... —Alorael, who couldn't get them to work, fiddled with the forum settings, and now sees that they work. It will hopefully be good enough. Just testing. And hoping this works.

Actually, you can roll through the demo, if you are sneaky, and make it to the testing grounds. Sneak through the tests and pick up the create clawbug skill. Battle shaping of 1 will allow clawbug creation, from there on, you can steamroll everything. When you get a chance, upgrade to plated bugs and clawbugs. Swarm enemies. The new clawbugs and plated bugs are some wicked evil bugs.

No, it doesn't. But it does change character strengths. An Agent's strength is not readily apparent on easy difficulty. Nothing lives long enough to matter. It is easy to say she is underpowered or weak, when compared to a Guardian who can plow through anything. Go from easy to torment though, and the strengths of the characters change. Heck, even going up just a notch, changes your enemies enough to give you a taste of change. The power shifts. Spells change. Mental magic is nearly worthless at lower difficulties. Sure, it has uses, but it is utility at best, we've established that by now. At higher levels, mental magic is the most reliable way to deal damage and death. Always has been, always will be. From Augmented Sholai to War Tralls, there is an army around you waiting to be tapped.

Actually, to be fair, Jeff did well with this one. Even on normal, some thinking is required. There are moments where you are in very real danger of being killed.

Really, some people get it, others don't. Not all of us have crafty minds. For some people, even with a detailed guide of what to do and how to do it, they don't have the sort of mind it takes to follow through and apply it properly. This isn't an insult or anything, just an observation. Some people are suited for swarming an enemy, using brute force, or applying stealth. We all have tactics that work well for us. While I can be a bit stealthy in Geneforge games, I am not particularly good at it. My approach is to obliterate anything and everything in my path, sow chaos and discord in the enemy ranks, and leave nothing living in my wake. Being forced to sneak around or apply stealth irritates me to no end. For those who do have the mindset to pull off my original Agent strategy, who have played the game through, who have flourished and done well, they can attest to what true power is. Others, they will remain confused and do what works for them. Strategy is relative. I will say though, the glass cannon paper tiger type build is pretty much a dead end now. It can be done, but it is far to risky and prone to failure. Now, it is turtles. Turtles all the way down. Enemies are to strong to obliterate instantly, to many things can clean your clock in one hit, so now it is more about who can outlast who.

Some people get it, other people don't.

Submission turrets are the only thing that really concerns me.

A Servile doesn't need to make creations when he can control them. Mental magic. I'm the guy that pretty much wrote the book on how to play Agent types. Way back when, when G1 came out, everybody said the Agent was the weakest class. Nobody knew how to play them right. I kept telling people the Agent was the most powerful. Fast forward a bit, and we have the Servile. Tactics have changed a bit, but most of the basics remain the same. Any class can dominate the game and become brutally overpowered through the use of mental magic. This is not readily apparent however. On normal play, this isn't as important really. But when you scale up the difficulty, you make mental magic stronger. Because of this, Agent types, Serviles, the stronger their enemies are, the stronger they become. As always, strength lies in controlling the minds of others. Monster X on normal difficulty can be dealt with, killed, with some effort, by any class really. On higher difficulties, Monster X gains thousands of hit points and becomes a real spot of trouble... But also a potentially deadly minion for you to control. There are creatures that you can control... Powerful creatures. But you can't always shape them. Some creations are out of your creation range. Strength lies in the subtle use of monster economy. Encounter one mob, daze, acid, charm. Cast terror to break mob up. Make sure you try to herd a creation or two toward where you know, or suspect more monsters might be waiting. Don't kill them, use them. Drive them ahead with terror because you can't control them directly, and, when you ease your self forward and see more monsters, charm the first one you can see on the edge of the screen. You want to drive the most powerful ones forward if you can, but weakened, damaged, burned by acid, allow them to spend whatever is left of their lives serving you, and allow the weaker creations to wear and whittle them down. When all the weak ones are dead, the strong ones, which YOU control, are either near death or dead. The Servile exceeded the Agent in G4 due to survivability. A Servile can turtle down, and with the right spells, become nearly invulnerable. You could weather any storm, outlast any foe. In G5, spells changed. But with the right items, you can become quite sturdy. You can reach about a thousand hit points. You can still become a solid immovable mass that is virtually impossible to kill, and, as such, can stand in the thick of a heated battle, directing the flow of events, like a conductor leading an orchestra. The fundamentals remain the same. He or she who can cast mental magic rules the game. Big difference now is, surviving enemy assaults. If you tag something with acid or lightning aura, enemies will make a beeline for you. Enemies are smarter, and defensive spells can not be cast in such a way that you become invincible. As such, the only thing that matters is defensive capability, and it is in this that the Servile excels. You can wear anything and everything around you down, with no worry what so ever of anything wearing you down. You can, for all intents and purposes, become invulnerable, even though godhood through buffing has been nerfed. A good example. I had a Servile in the beta. I needed ammo for my baton. I encountered an area that had who knows how many reaper turrets. Testers will know the area. I prepared my self, and then proceeded to walk through there, stabbing each turret to death with the Oozing Sword. I took very little damage and was in no real danger the whole time. Yes, I was pumped full of reaper thorns each round. Yes, they did some damage. But they really didn't hurt much and missed frequently, or were parried. What damage I did take was easily regenerated. I harvested those reaper thorns the hard way and walked out of there with enough ammo to last me through the end game. Also, it is entirely possible to go through the pass with the eyebeast guarding it before completing the stoneworks quest and getting a pass from Astoria. I'm not sure I could do this with any character but the Servile. Nothing else is sturdy enough. Completing that second pass with the eyebeast is how you get the Oozing Sword too, and it is important to get that early. Getting it allows you to make short work of the golem guards in the stoneworks.

And the quest is really easy to do, too.

A Servile can shape just about as good as a shaper class through items. Plus, cheap combat and magic skills. Think "red wizard" tactics.

I'm sorry, but the Servile was arguably one of the best power gamer classes in G4. No real weakness at all. No point in explaining it though.

Uh, I'd pump endurance regularly. That's just me.

You've already screwed up. You should have exactly ZERO invested in battle magic at this point. You can train for two levels right after leaving the Foundry area. In short, you shouldn't add points to magic skills at all. Between trainers and items to boost it, there is really no need as your creations will be stronger than you for a long time. Make clawbugs. Lots of clawbugs. They do brutal poison damage.