Iguana-on-a-stick

Like Slar said at the start, there's no achievement for the non-aligned ending, so that one is hard to count.

Either way makes sense to me that the saner of the two pro/anti-servile factions are the most popular.

I am very interested to see that the "solo" score is that high compared to the normal faction endings.

I mean, if 2-3% only complete Normal or Veteran, how the hell does 1% complete solo and 0.6% pacifist?

This was asked on the steam forums, and Jeff said he'd add a way to see creation resistances in an update.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/2480560/discussions/0/4357869680019156353/#c4357869680019267443

I also have a party of 6 (3 Glaahks, a vlish and an artila) and it happens even in pretty non-cluttered areas, just from having creations around.

I.e. here my shaper wants to move 3 squares to the other side of that mine. Should be 3 action points.

What happens instead?

He moves 1 square up and is out of moves.

Perhaps it happens more to me because Glaahks and my guardian are all melee creatures, and so much more likely to surround a target?

Edit: Links to bigger versions

https://ibb.co/bRH22Qn

https://ibb.co/VYPXnsV

1 hour ago, Slarzahl said:

This is why I noted this possibility at the the bottom of the original post 🙂

 

I haven't actually seen this happen since I set the speed to its current value, so I think this should be relatively rare.  (With higher values, it was frequent.)

Ah, I missed that part at the bottom.

I'm afraid that on my system it's not rare. It happens quite often, and not just with creations in narrow spaces. Even just moving to a place that says it costs 6 action points often instead costs all 8 if there's an obstacle somewhere on the path.

Not sure what is causing it, but I'm guessing it's something system dependent like your processor's speed.

On 4/4/2024 at 2:58 AM, Slarzahl said:

- This is a massive time-saver!  The only real gameplay effect is that it becomes easier to Stealth past things.  So I recommend not using this mod for a pacifist or stealth-based playthrough 🙂

Sorry for the double post, but this is unrelated to the previous one.

I've been trying out the mod, and I noticed that since I increased creation speed, pathfinding in combat sometimes fails.

i.e. I have a bunch of creations standing in a narrow space

	V
	G G
   G G

  #

V is a Vlish, G are Glaahks, the # is the vlish's destination.

Clicking at # now often removes all of the Vlishes' action points but it doesn't actually move as it bumps into the Glaahks. I see it rapidly twitch back and forth for a brief while, and then it stays in place but its turn ends. Even though it had the action points to use it.

A side effect of the speed increase being too fast for the pathfinding perhaps?

You can work around it by clicking on open ground and moving short distances only, but still worth keeping in mind.

3 hours ago, Slarti said:

 

It's in G4, and yes.  (This is a screenshot of where it was copied and pasted into a web page back in 2006.)

Reminds me of Lilarcor the talking sword in Baldur's Gate

Quote

The sword whistles, incredulous. "Advice, eh? Well, besides working on your swordmanship. Besides that, I'd have to think."

"Hmmm... find someone rich, and kill them. Find someone richer, and kill them, too! Hack and slash your way to fortune! Woo-hoo!!"

That one came with suitably annoying voice acting too.

Seems like a wasted opportunity, given that the whole Drypeak mountains are a failed experiment in getting plant life to flourish in inhospitable terrain and that many of the life forms that did flourish turned out to be horrible thorny indestructible weeds.

Would have made perfect sense to add some backstory about a Shaper trying to create a tree that would seek out water only to end up with an ambulant plant that was only good for killing things, so he then spliced it with a turret. Or something to that effect.

So on the topic of creation upgrades: What does boosting strength do for a Glaakh?

Their main attack deals energy damage and is boosted by magic skill.

Their cone attack does energy damage and is boosted by magic skill.

Their terror skill is a magic effect and is boosted by magic skill.

Strength boosts... their carry weight? Wait, creations do not have carry weight. (No Glaakhs wearing sweaters in this setting, no sir.)

So does strength do nothing for them?

Wait, melee skill includes a chance of an attack costing fewer action points? Since when?1

I had no idea.

Also, some of those tooltips on weapon shaping are brutal. Seems I wasted some money there...

Suggestion:

Healing craft -> Does it also boost the recovery effect of i.e. cure affliction? The tooltip on that spell lists a percentage bonus. I always thought that meant more turns' worth of debuff would be removed. If so, the tooltip could clarify that it's not just hitpoint healing.

Mechanics -> Tooltip could include that it also helps with disarming mines, manipulating power spirals, and using machines. (Though anyone who installs a mod probably already knows that.)

Either way, thanks for making this.

I'm currently doing a loyalist guardian with Magic shaping because I thought they'd be great for support.

Vlishes were disappointing, Artillas were cheap but useful, and Glaakhs are great. (Stun, charm and terrify everyone!) No gazers, but who'd want to create such Barred abominations anyway.

While you could create Drayks, those too are barred which seems to go a bit against the idea of a loyalist. Rothgroths would probably work but it would leave you with an all-melee party.

2 minutes ago, Slarti said:

One thing this does bring up, is that it's an option for a way to mix shaping types.  Not a super efficient one, but better than trying to pump lots of different shaping types.

Yeah, I think this is a viable strategy... at very low levels only.

At the start, when you're a new player figuring out if you want to go down the fire or magic or battle-shaping paths, you can use your starting shaping skills + maybe an item or two (x-skin Jerkin) to try out various creations, and use essence to boosts their level instead of investing in skills. This lets you try out tier 1 and maybe 2 (if you find a canister) creations, without having to commit to a path.

But at higher levels, it just won't fly.

10 minutes ago, alhoon said:

With 10 battle Shaping and 2-3 in the other shaping trees ... could you even control 7 fully leveled Roths? 

One of my Fyoras went rogue in the mines (the attack-them kind) and I have "weak" control. 

Haven't done the math (can't afford that many yet) but with leadership boosting control and battle shaping now providing double control boosts, all my creations are for now sitting at "perfect" control.

And you'd end up with much more than 10 battle shaping in this schema anyway. (I am recommending buying essence mastery only when it is MUCH cheaper than battle shaping, and as soon as you do, battle shaping becomes the better choice again because the essence mastery cost goes up.)

8 hours ago, Slarti said:

First off, one thing that's been ignored here is that there are five free levels of Essence Mastery to be gained from canisters, quests, etc.  OK, two of those are for slaying faction leaders, but three of them are reasonably findable at endgame.  Now let's look at the formula:

I did not know that.

I also tend to play no-canister, so that tends to affect where I spend my points. But yeah, that's definitely a reason not to invest too much too early.

8 hours ago, Slarti said:

 

Now, suppose we invested in whichever of shaping skill or essence mastery was cheaper.  At level 20 that's 190 skill points to play with, say 60 are thrown at spells, mechanics, leadership.  That means we buy around 12 points of shaping skill and 10 points of essence mastery.  That's not crazy on the shaping investment, but the essence mastery?  We'll be at 400 essence.  (472 at level 24.)  That's nuts.

Yeah, that's nuts. So I agree: At a certain point you have enough essence, and building a character that goes beyond that results in effectively wasted points.

That said: I still think there's a case to be made for gettin getting more essence.

Let's take your Rothgroth example. I'd personally want to give them overload and innate haste and also put the spray on at least a couple, but perhaps that's not optimal so let's say they just get overload. And I'm playing a guardian instead of a shaper, so that character would still have to invest some more. But that's besides the point. But let's take your example and say that 141 essence is enough and we're playing a shaper, so it fits.

But now start comparing skill cost again. By the time I have invested 60+ skillpoints in Battle Shaping, I am up to 9-10 skillpoints per point.

If I haven't bought any essence mastery, those 9 skillpoints would get me 2 levels of essence mastery, or 44 essence. And that is enough to buy all the Roths a level WITH 2 points of strength or endurance. Upgrading all 7 roths costs 35 essence, so until you do that 5 times, 35 essence is much better than a level of fire shaping. Let alone 44 essence.

So for Roths, the formula should be: Whatever is cheaper to get, 30-ish essence (rounding down to account for the bonus stats), or a level of shaping skill. So the essence mastery is better if it's about 2/3rds the cost of another point of battle shaping.

Until you reach max upgrades, which in this formula would be 7 * 43 = 301 essence.

Now if you used creations with more expensive upgrades, like Eyebeasts, that formula obviously changes and investing in magic shaping would be much better value for money until you reached a really huge cost discrepancy. But of course you'd need to invest some in essence mastery just to be able to afford that, so an early investment still would be a good idea.

So in conclusion:

* I still think it's smart to start investing moderately in essence mastery in the early game before you start levelling shaping skills

* Either you end up using expensive creations, so you'll need the essence.

* Or you can buy extra levels for the creations and get bonus stats for the same skill point investment

* But I agree that you should invest much more heavily in shaping skills in total

5 minutes ago, Slarti said:

The problem is that you're stuck with those sunk points in Essence Mastery for the whole game.  And for most of the game, that point in Essence Mastery is not going to be preferable to an extra level on all your creations.

 

That doesn't mean Essence Mastery is worthless, but it does mean the deciding factor should not just be "what's mildly more useful at level 4," especially if that mild advantage isn't going to make or break your progress.  The deciding factor should be "what's better overall, in the long run?"

 

A few points in Essence Mastery is fine; but in the long run "pick the cheaper one to increase" would be a pretty bad strategy.

You're always going to want at least a few points of essence mastery, so getting those points early doesn't hurt you at all in the long run. And early on I also like the extra flexibility a lot (Boost creation level or get an extra creation, lets me try out various creation types without locking myself into a single path.)

But do you really get more essence than you need by the end-game? To max out all creations and still have enough for spells/battle shaping? Wouldn't a full squad of (Ur)Glaakhs/Eyebeasts/Gazers/Rothgroths costs 100s of essence, requiring a large investment? Or do you guys consider it more optimal to not max out the number of creations you can field or use lower-tier ones?

Mind you, I don't play on Torment so I don't claim my playstyle is at all optimal. I just always run out of essence in every Geneforge game.

9 minutes ago, Randomizer said:

Not whatever is cheaper in the early game, but which gives you the biggest boost. In the early game each extra point of essence mastery gives you less since it is tied to your current level. A shaping level increases all your creations of that class aiming them do more damage and harder to kill.

"Whatever's cheaper" was for the late game, I meant.

But I'm not sure the math works out for shaping skills even in the early game.

Take my Shaper from the demo. Level 4. Suppose Fire Shaping and Essence mastery both cost 4 points. (Which is the case after you buy 1 point of Fire Shaping.) Essence mastery at this stage gives just 6 essence which isn't much.

But as long as I have no more than 3 Fyoras, 6 essence is still enough to give each of them a level AND an extra +2 INT or EN.

So unless you have 4 Fyoras or more, Essence Mastery gives more returns. Edit: And I doubt you could afford 4 Fyoras at level 4 without essence mastery. (Certainly not if you want to give them fire breath.)

25 minutes ago, alhoon said:

I would also like to know if you are in the camp of "spend a lot on essence mastery to get more creations" or the "spend more on shaping mastery for tougher creations." 

I find that in the early/mid game essence mastery is a better investment than shaping skill.

After all, if you only have 3-4 creations, you can probably give them MORE levels + bonus stats by spending essence than from another level of shaping skill. But it also gives you the flexibility to spam a horde of cannon fodder instead.

Of course, when you have 7 high-end creations, the math changes. Though even then, Essence Mastery scales with your character's level, which means you still get a lot of mileage out of it.

So probably the answer is to buy whatever is cheaper?

49 minutes ago, Slarti said:

Searing Artilas also get that combo... but Searing Artilas cost literally twice as much as Fyoras.  You could make 2 fyoras and do twice the damage, or you could get that acid.  Magic shaping is great but searing artilas (while not without their use) are not the main reason why.

I thought the Artila inflicted a lot more damage, but when I checked the numbers with equal shaping/skill it turned out to be only 1.16 times as much. The difference is a bit bigger when dealing with a single opponent, but that's not what you invest in no-cooldown AoE for. So yeah, definitely better to spam Fyoras then. Though a single artila with shield still seems very helpful.

48 minutes ago, Slarti said:

I am 100% agreed with Randomizer about Fyora innate haste + no cool down making them (and Drayks) the uncontested spammable AoE powerhouses.  Cryoas have none of that even though they are more expensive, and the things they get instead really aren't worth the trade.

 

 

Searing Artilas also get this combo, AND they inflict acid. And have a free shield ability you can use in the same turn you attack.

When I swapped from Fyoras to Artila's I noticed a very big damage upgrade.

Of course, Drayks are a different story.

There is a checkbox on the resolution selection screen that says "play game in a window." Did you uncheck that one?

Also, I found out that Nvidia image scaling https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5280/~/how-to-enable-nvidia-image-scaling  works really well for me to play on lower resolutions without the graphics getting blurry. I also have  a 2K monitor, and using the upscaled 1970*1108 resolution (see link) I graphics that are much nicer and easier to read than I managed to achieve in Mutagen. Worth a try if you have an Nvidia GPU.

49 minutes ago, alhoon said:

Apologies, but I find that mistaken from the perspective of the casual gamer.
I am in the early game with mechanics 2 I think and I can't open half the doors and the chests in the early areas without living tools, which are rare and expensive at this point. I cannot loot investigate many of Drypeak's buildings and there are abandoned chests in the mines I cannot open. Yes, I am aware that I could return there 10 levels later with the gear and all or save-and-load to use my living tools wisely, but keeping a huge list of doors I have not opened or frequent save-load is not that entertaining. 

Thus, I would dare say: Mechanics are needed in the early game.

 

 

"Not a lot" doesn't mean "2".

The big top post says that having mechanics 6 works fine, and so far that holds true for me. 6 mechanics costs 15 points, so that's 1.5 levels. That indeed is "not a lot."

But yeah, I would indeed advice new players to get that 6 mechanics early. The items just mean you need to invest less after that.

On 3/29/2024 at 11:57 AM, Mechalibur said:

I think Nora was always like that. Too bad the game never goes into detail about why she's so loyal to him.

On 3/29/2024 at 1:18 PM, alhoon said:

It does, in a way. When I pressed Nora to give me the dirt, I got a message that Guardians often take the "soldier's loyalty" too far. Couple that with the fact that she is a Shaper puppet (i.e. brainwashed), and you get where that loyalty comes from. 

Not sure if this was added for the remake, but you can ask here about this directly. "Why are you so loyal to Zachary?" She says Zachary saved her , and "not just her life."

She also says she "trusts his judgement" and that "he is not the most talented shaper, but he is a good man at times."

Suggests to me she's far from blind to his flaws ("at times") but that she does have good reason for her loyalty, even if the details remain mysterious. It's not just soldier loyalty or being a "brainwashed puppet" or anything like that.

17 minutes ago, Slarti said:

It does seem a little silly.  Control wasn't even a big deal in Mutagen on Torment, but it wasn't completely irrelevant at least.

 

Thinking about it... I bet, though, that there's a subset of semi-casual players (but not playing on Casual) who had intensely negative reactions (like "ragequit and write an angry review") to creations going rogue for a turn in the middle of combat when they didn't expect it.  So I wonder if this is in response to that.

 

Seems like it could have been gated more by difficulty level, at least.  But oh well.

As an experienced but not hard-core player (Not prone to rage-quitting, but never tempted to but the difficulty above "normal" either) I definitely struggled with control in Mutagen.

Mutagen had some "difficulty gates" like when you just got past the Awakened village and the game got quite hard for the not-too-adept.

I responded by making more Fyoras and then lost control a lot, I then responded by trying to raise Fire Shaping... and found that this did not actually increase the control level at all. (Because the gains from fire shaping were negated by the increase in creation level.)

I found this VERY confusing and counter-intuitive, especially once I found out that raising a second type of skill DID boost control.

With some info from folks here and on the Steam forum I figured it out, and by the mid-game control ceased to be an issue. But I don't think most players would investigate so much, so I definitely think boosting the control gain from shaping skills was the right move, because it makes the system intuitive. (Want to control your Fyoras? Boost fire shaping!)

But also making leadership boost control might have been overkill, yeah. I mean, it's not like leadership was a bad skill before this change....

On 5/8/2021 at 8:45 PM, TriRodent said:

Sure, by the time you work your way through all six chapters of Avernum ... you'll probably have forgotten what a Shaper even was let alone the Loyalists/Rebellion early story...

Personally, I find it very hard to remember the story of the Avernum games. (There was an emperor, right?) I'm not even sure how many I played. But the Geneforge games each stand out crystal clear.

Probably because the central questions of the geneforge world fascinate me. Like @Corylea said, questions of "what kind of power over life should be allowed, and who should have that power" is a lot more topical than "Should we or should we not exile all the undesirables to underground Australia."

Perhaps had I lived in 19th century England I would have found the Avernum games more relevant. 🙂

Edit: Though I think it also helps a lot that each Geneforge game is set in a distinctive and memorable location with a big overland map you spend a lot of time looking at. Avernum all tends to blur together as "it's a big cave."

3 hours ago, Corylea said:

Now I see that the Shapers are arrogant not necessarily because they choose to be but because using the Shaper biotech has arrogance as a freaking side effect.  Or maybe it's a planned and intended effect on the part of whoever made the canisters; I dunno.  It certainly wasn't intentional on MY part.

Not sure if it's a defense of the Shapers or a condemnation, but this is not the case.

Self-shaping via canisters or the gene-forge or any other method is strictly forbidden according to Shaper law. (I don't consider this a spoilers since your character would know this, and I do seem to recall it being mentioned now and again.) Because it has side effects. Shaper arrogance just happens because they believe they have all the answers and they certainly do have all the power, but they do have a few sane policies like "let's not change ourselves into power-hungry gods."

There's a reason Sukia island was Barred, after all.

That said, I've always enjoyed the Canisters as a mechanic. It's an ideal gamer-trap. On the one hand you get all these cool powers and abilities for free. But on the other you lose control over your character and may end up facing even more damning long-term consequences in-story. (Depending on the game and your choices therein.)