kaspian

Quote of the month: Quote: You know, any of these items should be available to any faction so long as your willing to wade neck deep in the blood of your enemies. Unless I'm mistaken, Astoria's faction allows you to get a second set of crystalline fibers by giving you the quest for the Secret Access Route. (The other comes from the Purity Workshop.) And doesn't some other faction, maybe Ghaldring, also give you this quest?

In another thread, Eigenvalue asked: Quote: '[W]hat is the "right build" for a solo? In some sense I am asking the expert minmaxing players to add an infiltrator guide to the strategy central. I would be hugely interested as to what I could have done better.' While waiting for the experts to respond, I'll try to summarize how I got my Infiltrator Callie to level 50. She is aligned with Astoria (after flirting with Alwan) and has finished everything in the game except: (a) clearing Lerman's Pass, ( attempting any optional area, and © embarking on the final mission, which leads to the climactic series of battles and the endgame. I played on Normal, used only 5 or 6 canisters (mostly for skills like Mass Madness not easily obtainable in any other way), and only the cheats to change my Shaper/Rebel reputation. Basically, I focused narrowly on Mechanics, Leadership, and magic skills. I bought a single point of Luck at the start of the game. My goal was to raise Mechanics to 10 before leaving the first game area, with Leadership trailing a point or two behind. For magic, I focused on Spellcraft. This meant, after a while, I had to save up experience points, rather than immediately spending them each time I leveled up. I recommend this practice, because it gives you a reserve of EPs to invest as the need arises -- for instance when you get a tremendous item of equipment that requires more Strength to wield, or reach a point where you need another (costly) level of Mechanics or Healing Craft. I tried to minimize spending on Strength, Intelligence and Endurance -- spending only when it became clear I had a serious need in one of those areas. I spent ZERO experience points on shaping skills (and never made a single creation), ZERO on Dexterity, and ZERO on Melee, Missile, Quick Action and Parry (though I did eventually pay Rawal's Guardian to teach me the latter two). I consider the Infiltrator to be a specialized character who needs every point to be focused in her areas of natural strength (or physical necessity). The equipment I eventually chose comprises the following: Agent / Infiltrator cloaks Quicksilver chitin / Infiltrator tunic Girdle of Genius Captain's shiv Dhonal's band Assassin's boots Fine silk pantaloons Lodestone gauntlets (better than the fancy crafted item) / Tinker's gloves Agent's shelter Demon fang talisman / Tinker's bauble I was cautious about enhancing this stuff -- holding out for golden crystals for the key items I planned to keep permanently, though I did also add some magic resistance and poison resistance via the appropriate enhancements. Moving through the game, I tried to follow both the paths of fighting and of stealth/diplomacy. Leave no enemy alive, and no mine disarmed, if you can deal with it. With pumped-up mental magic, you can handle most battle situations, especially when you acquire Daze and Dominate -- and later, Strong Daze, Charm, and Mass Madness. As I learned higher-level spells, I naturally had to add Intelligence. Unlock is good, even with high Mechanics, because it allows you to save living tools for crucial moments later in the game. Key blessing spells are Essence Shield/Armour and Rejuvenation Aura. They complement each other nicely and should be used whenever trouble is anticipated. Speed is good, but not as good as in earlier GF games -- you should focus instead on items that give you bonus action points. It's also a very short-lived blessing, as is War Blessing. Protection is good and lasts longer. Don't bother paying to learn other auras. Rejuvenation is so crucial that the others are a waste of resources. You need the full range of battle spells, though of course only certain ones will be effective in a given situation. During battle, start with something heavy like Lightning Aura or Essence Lances -- coupled with Wrack, if you've got time for a second attack -- then in subsequent rounds try "cheap" spells like Firebolt and Searer -- even late in the game, these are sometimes effective. When possible, I like to see an opponent suffering magic damage, poison damage, and acid damage on every turn. Healing spells are simple, since you don't need group-effect abilities. Get the highest Heal spell you can find, and seek out Banish Affliction. Along with Rejuvenate, that's really all you need. At level 50, my character's ability chart looks like this (including the effect of items and equipment): Strength 9 Dexterity 7 Intelligence 12 Endurance 5 Melee 9 Missile 2 Quick action 3 Parry 3 Battle magic 9 Mental magic 10 Blessing magic 8 Spellcraft 18 [All shaping skills = game start setting] Healing Craft 7 Leadership 13 (can be pumped to 15) Mechanics 15 (can be pumped to 20) Luck 3 What to add? As a solo character, you can quickly be overtaken by unfortunate events, so save the game early and often. And name the character after some beloved female in your life. This is like a "Get Out of Jail Free" card, redeemable when your girlfriend/daughter/spouse storms in to complain about your wasting time on some stupid computer game, looks over your shoulder, and sees her namesake kicking monster butt. Good times.

Thanks, everyone, for the input on this. The tip about saving reputation queries is an easy one to follow (and of course I never would have thought of it myself).

Though my Infiltrator character is a rebel at heart, I wanted to try sending her into "deep cover," so to speak -- getting that friendly shaper in Lethia Pass to change my rep so that I could get some more Shaper quests from Alwan and Taygen, then flipping back again and finishing in the Astoria faction. I guess I waited too late, and/or earned too much of a pro-rebel reputation. Not even the intercession of Conason, plus leadership of 16, could persuade Taygen or Alwan to trust me. I'll have to try this again.

This is a cool discussion, and I don't have a lot to add ... just one thought from the standpoint of fiction writing. I think it's helpful to remember that these folks -- Astoria, Alwan, Litalia, and the rest -- are *characters*, not embodiments of Platonic ideals. That is to say, they represent individual people, with all their quirks and strengths and shortcomings, their obsessions and ambitions and egos -- the good, the bad and the ugly. And as we know, no one is perfect (and no one is perfectly awful). The test of a good character is basically how real that "person" feels to the reader. In this respect, the game fairly represents real life. The fact that Astoria, for example, does not live up to everyone's expectation of what a perfect Awakened leader ought to be -- or fails in some other way to live up to some ideal -- is, to my way of thinking, a cool thing. A feature, not a bug. It makes her more credible as a *character*, by which I mean a fictional creation whom we can imagine to be a real living person. And that, in turn, makes this a richer and more interesting game. GF5 in this respect might be said to be more "mature" than the earlier iterations. In those games, the characters were pretty much defined by what faction they represented, rather than (so to speak) what kind of people they were.

I think in discussions of this kind we should try to stick to the game world and game reality, and resist trying to turn this into a debate about our real-world bête noires (like vegans). That said, the specific language and general situation surrounding the Taygen faction do seem clearly intended to echo Nazism and the genocidal program of the Endlösung. There are "camps." There is Nacht und Nebel (night and fog) -- murky circumstances in which people are "deported" to an unknown fate. There is a class of racially inferior Untermenschen, doomed to die because of the circumstances of their birth. Even the argument here about whether Taygen is mad, or evil, or both, or neither, very closely echoes the ongoing debate about who and what, exactly, was Adolph Hitler. I can't believe any of this was accidental. And I think it drives players to rally around the banner of whomever seems most clearly opposed to Taygen and all he represents. This would seem to be Astoria. And the poll results would seem to reflect this.

I liked G2 best. For a couple of reasons. 1. I could strongly identify, emotionally, with the Awakened faction. They appealed to my hippie, can't-we-all-get-along temperament. 2. The design of the map board -- basically a big circle with a few crucial passages between faction-dominated zones -- made it possible to play in game in a variety of ways. You could, for instance, ignore the Awakened in the NE and plunge directly into the more challenging territory of the SW. You could game the factions (as I think you can in GF5, though I haven't tried it yet), switching from one alliance to another and maxing out on all the goodies.

It seems, from my experience, that the important thing is to wait for the game to pop up a window saying something to the effect of, "Hmm, isn't this odd, Footracer doesn't seem to be dying quickly enough -- could she be getting her strength from SOMEWHERE ELSE?" This is your cue to go into her quarters and smash the magic machine. Until then, if you reach the machine, you get something like, "It still has enough strength to defend itself." High mechanics (i.e. 21) doesn't make any difference.

Hasn't there been a change, also, in that you don't need 5 action points to cast a spell? Is that new to GF5?

This makes sense, I suppose. But it does force a total tactical (if not strategic) re-think on the part of us Agent/Infiltrator aficionados. In past iterations of GF, I've based my entire character-building plan, as well as my "route" around the battle map, on the expectation of getting these extra points. Thus I've tended to ignore shaping skills altogether, and to spend as few points as possible on strength and (to a lesser extent) endurance. The saved skill points have gone into both spellcraft/magic and mechanics/leadership. Now I wonder how, or if, this approach needs to be tweaked. Until reading this thread, I'd assumed that my problem with action points must have come from adding an enhancement to my Assassin Boots, despite ominous hints that this might not be a good idea. One more note: it seems to me that the first AP "bump" -- from 8 to 9 -- works pretty reliably, for instance when you craft Mercuric Boots.

Has anybody put together a directory (so to speak) as to where all these charms are located? I've just played through the game once, but I missed most of this stuff.

Thanks. I started a new game anyway. I wanted to try maxing out on mechanics.

Is this possible? I got a few maps into a Servile game, and I'm getting eyestrain from trying to pick out my own character in its drab tan robes.