Serene Tempest

It probably wouldn't be worth Jeff's time yet, but an engine update (and possible rebalancing) of the older games in the series would be really cool.

I saw Astoria as the voice-of-reason within the Shapers; the one who looked at the world and considered that maybe the Rebels had some good points after all. Much like Greta eventually evolves into being the voice-of-reason within the Rebellion. And given that they would have had to watch the more extreme elements of their side get scarier and scarier, it's easy to understand why they might start quietly trying to seek out some common ground with each other. Edit: Wow. I missed an entire page of this discussion. Hence the jarring change of topic .

You'll probably find Rawal's ending disappointing. Since it seems like you have rebel sympathies, the choice between the other two factions probably hinges on whether you think the Shapers have enough redeeming qualities to be reformed or whether the world would just be better off without them. I vote Astoria, as the hardcore rebels are a little too reckless and canister-happy for my tastes.

I've also found that thrown weapons are good on fighters. If they have EW, I don't have many problems with encumberance after level 12 or so, and they do much more damage than bows. I even have a human EW/PS tank that got more damage out of regular javelins than smite even with only 3 levels of thrown weapons and one level of sharpshooter from a deadeye cloak. He had 4 levels in priest spells and no spellcraft, trained in Smite to level 3, and had 5 dexterity. I was actually a little dissapointed in this - I was hoping that having access to smite would allow me to neglect investing in a ranged weapons skill.

Ignore this. A glitch in the forms resulted in a double post.

I found an empty box that looked like it was where the puresteel was supposed to be. If getting it filled involves talking to someone, I'm probably out of luck. The workshop didn't take too kindly to me killing their head alchemist.

I never found it, and it wasn't an option to have the ex-guardian outside of the Zephyr Oasis craft. I'd assumed you needed more than one puresteel ring for that. I picked up one from Benhold's keep, but didn't find any others.

I just finished, and actually ended up using a Servile in the end, which worked better than I had thought it would. I had to pump intelligence a bit, but kept around a pair of coyras/vlish/drayks that allowed me to neglect having a powerful ranged attack of my own for most of the game, and gave me something to keep pummeling enemies with when my character was stunned or occupied doing other things. They could also act as emergency distractions for enemies if I started to overshoot my ability to take punishment. Final stats (base + item bonuses): Strength: 21 (12 + 9) Dexterity: 5 (4 + 1) Intelligence: 11 (9 + 2) Endurance: 12 (10 + 2) Melee Weapons: 16 (10 + 6) Missile Weapons: 8 Quick Action: 12 (10 + 2) Parry: 8 Battle Magic: 10 (4 + 6) Mental Magic: 15 (9 + 6) Blessing Magic: 11 (5 + 6) Spellcraft: 6 (5 + 1) Fire Shaping: 2 Battle Shaping: 1 Magic Shaping: 1 Healing Craft: 6 Leadership: 9 (up to 11 with appropriate items) Mechanics: 12 (up to 17 with appropriate items) Luck: 0 Items: Quicksilver Plate, Girdle of Genius, Assassin's Boots, Donal's Ring, Firesteel Guantlets, Talisman of Might, Guardian Claymore/Reaper Baton, Polychromatic Shield, Agent Cloak, Blasted Greaves. The Drayks were with me through the endgame (Litalia's), though one of them kicked it in the final battle. I think I'd already raised Strength to 11 or 12 before I got the Guardian Claymore, Talisman of Might, Donal's Ring, and Blasted Greaves. Had I know I'd find so many strength-boosting items, I would have spent those skill points elsewhere, probably on another two levels of fire shaping so I could have cyrodrayks. By the time I got to the Dera Reaches I had enough essence to cast Essence Blade on myself and the drayks before every major fight, which made quite a difference. My character ended up level 49, and the Drayks, which I kept with me from the beginning of the Storm Plains through the endgame, level 42. I actually found the regular Drayks to me more useful than I'd thought. For a servile, essence efficiency is important, and as pointed out in the fire creation guide, Drayks are quite good for the essence you spend on them. They were also much more useful in the final battle than I'd thought, as with essence blade they could burn down Rotgoroths in 2-3 hits (normal difficulty) and War Tralls in 3-4, and with Regeneration Aura could easily shrug off hits from Draykons.

Out of the three main camps you have to choose from in the game, if I were living in the Geneforge world and happened to be someone of consequence I’d probably throw my lot in with the Trakovites. I don’t fully buy that shaping is inheriently evil or always does more good than harm, but I do think that when viewed as a whole (ie taking both their good and ugly sides into account) both the Shapers and the Rebels have fundamental flaws that are deal-breakers for me. The flaws of the Trakovites I could live with, or at least I could accept as the least of three evils. I’ll start with the Shapers. Centuries of peace, prosperity, and stability are nothing to scoff at. But not everyone benefited from the peace and prosperity. Serviles were treated little better than beasts of burden, and Drayks considerably worse. Even outsiders had to be lucky enough to live under the administration of one of the more benevolent shapers. While I might concede that Sage Taygen is an anomaly that never would have arisen outside of a gruesome decade-long rebellion (though the Drayks might disagree with that…), I don’t think that Rawal is. I think there are probably quite a few Rawals in the ranks of the shapers, and that they are tolerated simply because they are Shapers and at the end of the day that gives them the right to treat outsiders as they will within the bounds of Shaper law. So while the Shapers definitely get points for being the voice of reason, I could not in good conscious stand behind them when they enslave one entire class of clearly sentient beings, actively try to exterminate another, and tolerate disregard for the wellbeing of those outside their ranks. The rebels do much better in this regard. If there were no Trakovites, I would probably be a very reluctant rebel. I would certainly feel much better escorting Serviles down the Shadow Road than bludgeoning them into submission and returning them to their masters. But the Rebels embrace some really reckless and scary policies. If nothing else, I can’t see much good coming of canisters and geneforges in the long run. I don’t think it takes a genius to realize that instant power at the price of one’s sanity and humanity is a very, very bad thing. Perhaps dramatic steps needed to be taken in order for them to have a chance in hell of overthrowing the shapers, but if they ride that horse to power I doubt they’ll be able to get rid of it after the dust clears. Assuming they even want to by then. That leaves the Trakovites. What are their flaws? First and foremost are the means they use to achieve their ends. While I should admit that I’m only in the process of playing G5 as a Trakovite right now, I’ve gotten the general impression that Litalia has you do some rather gruesome things in the service of her faction. But the fact of the matter is that gruesome things are going on all over Terriestria at that time already, and neither side’s path to victory is clear of highly questionable actions. The bigger flaw of the Trakovites, in the long run, is that they are essentially luddites. Shaping is the cornerstone of Terrestia’s economy, culture, and way of life. Taking that out would be like a worldwide ban on computers. It would mean a much more primitive lifestyle for everyone. It would mean more hardship in the world and less prosperity. This is certiantly not an ideal situation. But in my estimation, it hands-down beats the other two. Of course, the de facto alliance between Astoria and Greta in G5 largely combines the better aspects of both the Shapers and the Rebels. So that is still my choice as a faction. But since the topic of this discussion was Loyalist vs. Rebel vs. Trakovite, that's what I talked about.

I completed my first playthrough of G5 six months or so ago running a battle magic oriented Sorceress allied with Astoria. Now that enough time has passed so I've forgotten a lot of the details of the game (ie. I won't remember what's around every corner), I thought I'd give it another run through. This time around, I think I'd like to try a build balanced between martial and shaping skills - a character with solid (if not necessairly amazing) melee skills backed up by a small but powerful pack of creations, perhaps 2 melee and 2 missile. My question is whether I'd be better off with a Shock Trooper or a Warrior. If it helps, I plan on making my creations as early as possible and keeping them around until they need to be replaced by higher tier ones, and I'm thinking of allying with either Litalia or Ghladring this time.

Convincing the intelligent Ornk in G5 that the Shapers would never dream of killing, dissecting and studying it.

I have mixed feelings. I started on A2, and I both miss the outdoors and think A2/A3 had stronger plots than A4/A5 (though A5 was definitely a big improvement). I also find myself missing the older, wilder Avernum as opposed to the crowded one crawling with treasure hunters from the surface. On the plus side, I've found the newer games to be more challenging - after A2, I ran A3 with only one mage/priest to try and make it more challenging, and it still ended up being mostly a cakewalk. Also, the characters are much less one-dimensional than they were in the earlier games.

Originally Posted By: Jimm The thing is why doesn't Rawal have a faction and I think it would be interesting if the Serviles had one. While her motives are debatable, Astoria's goals line up reasonably well with the more Awakened-leaning serviles. If you're thinking more of the Takers, then you won't get much closer than Ghladring's faction.

The Drakons, in the end, only want unrestricted shaping for themselves. Their alliance with the human and servile rebels is only out of necessity, so they'll give them enough power to be strong allies, but no more?

What's the latest point in the game when you can still switch sides? I had to play through the first 3-4 areas enough times to figure out party building that I'm a little tired of them and would rather not start all over again to see alternate endings.

Have you cleaned out all the merchants? Also, if you're going to have 14ish mechanics by the end of the game and are not joining Ghladring's faction, it may behoove you to save 12 living tools for the end (wink wink).

Originally Posted By: Ohtar I'm confused about the idea that the Trakovites are the most moral. Litalia has pretty much forced them off that high horse with her whole "ends justify the means" dealie. Unless, of course, you do believe that evil means can be justified to accomplish good ends in extreme enough cases. Like Greta's argument in GF 4 for going along with Ghladring's plan to release the Unbound; on one hand, releasing the Unbound would kill hoards of innocent bystanders; on the other, without the Unbound the rebels stood no chance to win the war, how many people and creations would suffer under Shaper tyranny over the next several thousand years? While she seemed to have deep misgivings about it, she had decided that the former was the lesser evil. Litalia could make similar arguments. Weighing the suffering her methods cause here and now against the centuries of suffering they will hopefully prevent. Edit: I retracted a silly comment.

I would question how universally the shapers truly believe that their creations are no more than tools. A lot of american slave owners historically held to the position that african americans were less than human, but how many of them truly believed that, and how many of them used it to rationalize doing things they knew they should be having misgivings about? Even Alwan, who is about as staunch of a shaper loyalist as they come, seems to recognize that creations are (barely) more than just tools. Also, I don't think murder has to be malicious to be considered such. What if you were to kill someone not out of any hard feelings, but simply because they were in your way? Or, in a more extreme case, because you're a religious fundamentalist and think you're on a holy mission that unfortunately requires killing people? Just because Taygen doesn't think of himself as a mass murder (and because there are other people in the Shaper universe that probably agree with him) doesn't automatically mean that he isn't one.

You need pretty good leadership and mechanics to pull it off. Talk to the servant mind and convince it to unlock the controls for you. The oblisques scattered around the cells each have a letter; the letter sequences on the control panels are patrol routes.

GF 5, with GF 1 as a close second. They both had very strong plots, a wide range of paths for which reasonable arguments could be made, and well-balanced gameplay. GF 5 had better opening music though. Edit: I should mention that I skipped GF 3 as I had too much work at the time, and because I felt that GF 2 had been a little lackluster compared to 1. But, happily, the GF 4 demo sold me on giving the series a second chance.

Astoria, mostly because I find what she was working towards to be the most agreeable path (and outcome, as it turns out) available to you in the game. Her motives may be subject to debate, but if she really was vying for personal power, she did a pretty poor job of it, which leads me to believe there was more to them than that. My good-guy gaming persona has a tremendous amount of respect for Alwan, and in fact came really close to swearing loyalty to him, but couldn't quite see eye to eye with him on the treatment of the more intelligent and independent creations. He was genuinely torn about helping Astoria stab Alwan in the back and getting all those poor brave souls at Fort Rockfall killed in the process, but at that point he seemed to have exhausted his non-evil options for seeing the war end in a good way. Also, I would have voted Rawal for worst if he had been an option. All the rest of the factions were concerned on one level or another with the fate of the world, or at least the fate of a group larger than themselves. But given that he isn't an option, Taygen comes in second.

Originally Posted By: Hellin Daimiel to Helansajar You don't have to fight them if I'm thinking of the same ones. Enough leadership, I believe, will get you through. Enough leadership gets them to delay attacking you, buying yourself just about enough time to walk across the zone. But if you get sidetracked at all, they're likely to lose their patience and attack you anyway.

If you have the spellcasting ability, see if you can hit it with essence shackles, lightning aura, acid spray/oozing blade, and searer (ie get it taking all three types of damage at the beginning of its turn). And maybe wrack if you have multiple creations pounding on it.

Definately agree here. I actually used to be more of an Avernum fan than a Geneforge one, but after GF 4, even Avernum 5 just doesn't do it for me like it used to.

I actually got through on the first attempt by dumb luck, because I had decided that the mages were the biggest threat to my crawbugs, so I charmed half of the warriors and serviles and so I could ignore them and charge the spellcasters. One of the mages retreated into that room, and after killing it I figured the machine couldn't be doing something that I liked, so I sabotaged it while Footracer was still dealing with her treacherous comrades outside .