jlsgaladriel

Quote: No melee attack of a ranged creation is ever better than the ranged attack... I've found the *only* way to get through Okavano Sea Caves with cryoas is to force them into melee.

Quote: I'm not really trying to do it for the challenge, I already had that in my first run through, and I want to see all the endings... Aha, it *is* for the story of it! Yep, that makes sense to me. I still need to do a Ghaldring run to complete the walkthrough, but I really don't want to Click to reveal.. slaughter everyone on the shaper council . I'll probably do this by taking one of my extant level-50 characters through, on the theory that the ickiness will go by quickly, and I will at least get to see the ending.

Quote: So if you have two equally good pieces of armor, and you need the stats from both, plug in the line, wear one, and both will give you their stats. I don't get why that would be fun, doom! Doesn't the game lose its charm if you never have to balance one thing against the other? Or have the anticipation of how *cool* an artifact will be when you can finally make it? I'm not trying to pick on you for doing the scripting, I'm just curious as to what's left when the challenge is gone. Maybe the story of it? What do you like best about geneforge?

The funny thing is that Samman and the spectral gazer turned out to be a cakewalk for my character* -- it's the rothghroth that was just killing me. I think you're right, and strong mental magic is best for the rotghroth. As Thuryl pointed out, that's not a strong area for most shock troopers! Originally Posted By: thuryl For the Wormhost Rotghroth, charming the worms he spawns but not the rot itself will make the fight very easy as he wastes time killing his own worms. While he was occupied doing that, I sent my creations out to hunt down the eyebeasts, kyshakks and tralls; getting the jump on them reduces the chance that they'll run out at random and murder you. I haven't re-fought this battle yet, but I think my mistake was killing the worms and the rot too quickly. (The plated ones could be one-shotted by my kyshakks; the others by my war tralls.) Once I killed the roth, I had too many of his allies jumping me at once, and stunning such that I was bearly getting one turn every four rounds. I'd tried mass madness, but there was too much resistance (I think my skill was at 9 in mental magic, including gear.) Charm is most certainly a better way to go. Sounds like a good strategy, thanks! * mind you, this is on normal difficulty...

Surrendering to the bandits near Crenshaw is an ending, too! I bet that's pretty fast.

Quote: Your walkthrough is very thorough and much appreciated. I have used it quite a bit for reference. Thanks! ::beams with happiness:: Quote: I noticed that the Tinker's Bauble is listed in the w/t for the Northwest Fen, but it's really in the Northeast Fen, where the rot hangs out behind the pylons. oh! I'll fix this tomorrow -- am turning into a pumpkin tonight. Is it only in the one place, or is it in both?

Originally Posted By: doom a lot of other people would rather go through the game without scripting, so not to(o) many will probably listen to that post. Oh, I'm one who is *never* looking for a scripting answer for an in-game problem, because for me the whole fun of the thing is to figure out how to do something given the resources available to me! But madrigan seemed like he was pretty much begging for a cheat, so I figured I'd give him one.

Okay, if what you really want is to finish with a too-low character and move on, the easiest/safest way would probably be to edit an item you're wearing to butch you up. In the scripts folder, open the file named gf5itemschars.txt . Search for something you're wearing, preferably something good. Say you've got firesteel gauntlets: you'd see begindefineitem 485; it_name = "Firesteel Gauntlets"; it_protection = 12; it_stats_to_affect 0 = 9; it_stats_addition 0 = 5; it_stats_to_affect 1 = 10; it_stats_addition 1 = 5; it_stats_to_affect 2 = 11; it_stats_addition 2 = 5; In the script. it_protection is armour: want more than +12? change the 12 to whatever you'd like. The 9, 10, and 11 refer to battle, mental, and blessing magic -- see Ratt's list to understand this better -- Hike that battle magic "addition" number up from 5 into the stratosphere. Want more critters, need more essence? Add a line to hike your intelligence it_stats_to_affect 3 = 2; it_stats_addition 3 = 12; That should get it done for you!

Ooof, I've just been throwing myself against the Samman's Isle bosses, and have some questions for y'all. At what level do you normally attempt Samman's Isle? What level without using any cheats? What strategies have you found work best for the bosses? I threw a level-50 shock trooper at the wormhost rotghroth in the southeast. The best strategy I came up with was to pull him out of his grove a bit to the north, so that the gazers, kyshakks, and shock tralls are forced together into the narrow pathway. I *hate* cheating, except for saving-myself-annoyance purposes -- I have no qualms about healing and recharging at the border of a territory -- but I absolutely could *not* get through fighting the rot without an emergency "healmenow" or two. (At least it wasn't ten?) What strategies have you used for this boss, or for the other two bosses? Have they worked for a cheat-clean run? What level and what class were you when you tried them?

I've just had a run through the scripts, and I *think* I've updated the walkthrough to include all of the reputation encounters with actual numbers. Anyone wishing to check up on me, however, is more than welcome to do so! My hope is that this would be useful for anyone trying to keep a near-neutral reputation: in theory, one should be able to answer questions appropriately to balance out reputation from quests.

I've tried to put all the reputation encounters in the walkthrough -- it might help to check them off as you go, to keep track of your reputation? I think if you try to balance around the 100-point mark in reputation -- true neutral -- and aim for a leadership of 12 or so, you *should* be able to pass most of the requirements. A lot of the thresholds look something like this gf(100,0) + get_stat(20) / 2 >= 103 with stat(20) being leadership, such that with leadership 12 you could be three points off of neutral and still make the cut.

Quote: It is nothing like diablo 2... Oh! I think I've just figured out the similarity! RPG games I prefer tend to have meaningful decision-making with respect to character build. Diablo, NWN2, World of Warcraft, and Geneforge all share this aspect: part of the fun is in the anticipation of the skills you're building up to, and in the decisions you need to make to get there. The rpg games which bore me tend to be those in which character development involves no choices, or in which those choices don't matter. There was a for-the-time very pretty game, summoner, which I remember bored me to tears, because I didn't care about the development options available. There was a microsoft game, dungeon something (seige, maybe?), in which there were no character development choices at all, and the only appeal I remember was a very cute mule to carry loot. I've always assumed that the developers of those latter games were just better at graphics than they were at making interesting games. It's more likely, however, that what interests some gamers is the opposite of what interests me, and those developers purposely dropped what for them seemed like tedious non-fighting parts. So this reviewer might be saying, "hey! this game is icky in the way that diablo is! it wants me to *think* about my character development, and I just want to hit things!"

Quote: I wish there would be some way for us to voice our complaints on reviews. well, there sort of is, in that there's a comment area below. I actually clicked to begin to comment, but then realized macworld wanted a whole slew of registration information to allow it, and I was too lazy to set up another temporary email address to register. They don't deserve my real information.

Quote: jlsgaladriel, where's your sig from? It seems familiar. It's flavour text from the north part of the disposal vault, before the waves of rotdhizons, urglaahks, and urdrakons descend...

Quote: I commend you for successfully finishing the game with a weak Shaping character. It became so tough for me that I could not do it myself....maybe I belong in the I'm-a-wimpy-player-but-I-like-to-play-anyway camp. Hmm, well, I'm guessing that my internal min-maxer helped here: I very much decided early on that I would only put resources into one shaping tree and no other, so I wasted no money and no points in battle or magic shaping. (I'm not claiming that fire's the best tree in g5, not at all, just that it was a good thing to focus.) And if you like to play geneforge, then you're probably the sort of person who likes to fiddle with different possibilities and try things out, and that's not wimpy at all! I bet now that you've played through, you'll find the other character types more possible, especially if you decide up front what areas you want to focus on, and what ones you'd want to drop.

Quote: in terms of gameplay mechanics presumably Geneforge 5 wins (though I dunno...) For the most part it does, but I do miss the keyboard targeting the older games have. Otherwise g5 has the better interface: certainly inventory management is hands-down better than the older games, and the shopping interface is likewise also better. (I guess I'm just lazy, but if I'm on the keyboard to cast, say, charm (the eighth mental spell, 'h') -- mh -- I'm happy to stay on the keyboard to target character a or b -- mha -- rather than move back to the mouse.)

Originally Posted By: slarty It isn't anything like Diablo 2 -- but for people who play RPGs casually or not at all, the resemblance is probably uncanny. That's a disconcerting observation: I'd expect that a reviewer of an rpg on macworld *would* be an expert at rpgs on the mac platform. What good is a review by someone unfamiliar with mac rp gaming? Originally Posted By: blurb When the reviewer says you must choose a strong Shaper character, that's really not a duh moment on his part. He probably tried one of the characters with poor Shaping skills and fell flat on his behind like many here have. So, to me, his observation is dead on and he is giving sound advice. I think my biggest problem with the reviewer's assertion is that it reveals once again he's no expert. I've just finished playing a lifecrafter run, and yes, it was probably easier in some encounters than my first runthrough was. But I'm a passable but certainly not expert player -- I find Disposal Vault really hard on *normal* difficulty, and the torment folks who post in this forum blow me out of the water -- and I nevertheless completed the game just fine my first time through with a low-on-shaping character. If the reviewer had claimed, "shaping characters might prove easier to play than magic-based characters," I don't think I'd quibble, but he makes it seem as if heavy shaping is the only option, and that's just not true. Originally Posted By: blurb Inaccuracies aside, I thought it was a fair review. A review offers opinions... See, I'm not sure I can divorce the inaccuracies from the opinions, since the opinions are based on the falsehoods. If the reviewer's not a careful observer, not especially knowledgeable, and not very good at games, why should anyone respect his opinion? Heck, I don't have any special stake in Geneforge reviews, other than my desire for Jeff to keep making good games, but the fact that MacWorld posted a review from someone obviously unqualified really makes me unhappy.

Quote: ...early Shaper training. "All right, boys and girls.Here are a bunch of powerful creatures. We've already beaten them 98% to death and knocked them unconscious. Finish the job... Well, now, I'm not sure that would be appropriate to Alwan's flavour of Shaper mindset, but "Learn how to make others do the work, while you get all the glory!" isn't really all that far off the mark.

Quote: I don't get experience when creatures I've charmed kill other opponents... True, unfortunately. This is sort of exploitable when you expand the logic to realize that when you're fighting with allies, whoever strikes the death-blow gets experience -- except for the weird "hey, that was *my* acid, no fair" gyp randomizer (and/or thuryl?) mentionned. So, for example, when fighting with allies in peri orchards or in white wastes, you can arrange to strike a few death-blows yourself, and grab the experience for things the soldiers have fought. In the long run, you probably don't actually *need* the 18xp, or even the 180xp for each ten you manage, but it might make you feel better about the kills your allies have stolen from you!

Quote: Faction Only Areas...Joining Alwan faction gives access to his library. True, but it's possible to sneak down in from the northwest door without joining.

Okay, I went back to the scripts, and with Alwan you're right. The Control Core B and Repository quests are exactly the same *phase* for Alwan and Litalia, respectively, in that you need to express interest in joining them, but are not actually required to swear. But the wording is indeed different: For Litalia, to get the repository quest, one needs to say, I am interested in becoming a Trakovite. For Alwan, it is indeed I would like to fight for the Shapers. So Litalia's wording is actually more confusing than Alwan's.

Quote: same = confusing well, yes, confusing in exactly the same way, in that one needs to *tell* litalia one is interested in joining, but one is not required to swear. Quote: same = the first sworn quest is the repository? no, rather the opposite, the same in that *neither* requires swearing. The walkthrough is right now: If you say you wish to join Alwan's faction, he will next assign you Q: Control Core B. (Note that you can finish this quest without joining Alwan's faction, and the control core contains unmelting ice....

Yes, I'd gotten this wrong in the first version of the walkthrough. One *can* do the quest without swearing to Alwan; it is only required that one tell Alwan that one *wants* to join him. The dialogue is confusing the first time through, but it's exactly the same as with other factional quest sequences. (Litalia's quest in the repository is the same.)

Trust us, all of us mac folks know *exactly* what it feels like to wait for a good game not yet available for us! Bless spiderweb for turning the tables: we get to go first for a change! It's a good one, though: it's worth the waiting.

Quote: Another geneforge is bound to be created. Delicious did I miss a plot point in G5, or isn't there an undestroyed geneforge sitting in the foundry core?