Triumph

I finished off my Shaper run at Level 28. I could probably have gotten a little higher, had I made more effort to chase down some quests in the latter half of the game, but I really didn't need anything. You need Mechanics, Leadership, and beyond that your healing and blessing magic skills can be useful (the buffing and healing spells can let you help out friendly NPCs, or keep yourself alive if you need to run through a group of enemies, for example). Also, getting the Crystalline Shroud was HUGE. The +2 action points makes a massive difference in your ability to run around dodging enemies.

"Indeed, Daniel Jackson." That was the entire point of this thread. I never hit an enemy, used a creation, or cast a spell on an enemy.* Relying entirely on Leadership, Mechanics, stealth, and friendly NPCs or other environmental features, I completed the game as a Shaper. I plan to complete the game as a Rebel, too, I just haven't gotten around to that yet. Jeff fulfilled his promise and *really did* make it possible that if any point in the game you got stuck and the enemies were too hard, there would be an alternative path, a way to advance without without depending on your personal fighting ability. Of course there are plenty of quests and zones that you cannot clear or complete, if you play the way I did. *The one exception to this so far is in my Rebel game. When you first visit Khyryk, there is a speech option to say you came to kill him. I wasn't ready to kill him right then, however. When I came to actually kill him, that speech option had vanished, meaningful I was forced to hit him once myself in order to initiate the fight sequence. I relied on other things to actually defeat Khyryk, but I had to poke him once just to turn him hostile. I assume the later games work the same. I'm pretty sure they all share a promise, issued somewhere in the tutorial section or on the loading screens or wherever, that there are multiple paths to your goal, including one that doesn't rely on fighting. I am actually more confident that pacifist runs are possible in the later games, and a lot less sure about the first two games. I know G1 and G2 provide mechanical or leadership paths around some problems, but there are also points in those games where I can't recall any non-combat solutions to some situations. I enjoyed this play-through. It turned the game into a very interesting puzzle, forcing me to look at elements within the game differently than I ever did before.

Weirdness: I made it to Spears and locked myself in to the Shaper endgame. Then I went back to Gull and killed Khyryk before proceeding to finish the game. The Shapers in the ending take note of how I fixed the Dhonal Creator and murdered Khyryk, with the result that they end up killing me and I get eaten by a drayk. However, in the Gull Island ending, Khyryk still emerges from his tower and takes charge of the island. The game doesn't seem to have been designed for my loophole exploitation, muddling the ending. Note that I did NOT help the Harmony rebels, so I can confirm that helping the rebels on all three islands is not necessary get ending 1c. It does seem, however, that you cannot get the Greta-brokers-peace Gull ending if you were a Shaper. Since I already established that it is impossible to get the Rebel endgame unless you kill Khyryk, it would seem that each side effectively has only one Gull Island ending.

Shaper Endgame, continued: Benerii-Eo Vat Core: First you’ll meet some noxious vats which you can just run past, with the added bonus of deactivating them if you want. Then you’ll find two paths, both of which require you to trip an alarm to proceed. These activate golems that start patrolling and require sneakiness to avoid. In the southwest corner, there two controls you need to use – one deactivates the alarms / the golems, the other opens the door to the zone. Using both will clear the zone. Benerii-Eo Labs: don’t bother going here. Bad, bad place. Stay away if you’re playing pacifist. The Geneforge: First step, you’ll need 16 (I think?) Leadership to talk your way past Litalia. Then run around all sneaky through the back tunnels and use mechanics to sabotage Akhari’s machinery. Run over some hot pads, find levers to deactivate others. There are three sets of machinery that make creations of Akhari that you can sabotage. From Litalia, you’ll need to go west to find the shapers, south and then east through the tunnels to get to two of the machines. But you’ll need to go back to Litalia, go a little south of her and loop back east to get to the other machine. If the hot pads do major damage to you, you’ve missed a lever somewhere. If they do just a little damage, you’re probably on the right track. Then just let the shapers and the creations from the meddled machinery do the dirty work for you. BOOM. Geneforge 3 completed as a Shaper without ever having to strike a blow or make a creation.

If by regularly you mean "Every five years or so."

It's the explanations that really make it fun. Blindly guessing is easy but boring. Contrariwise, trying figure out your wordplay / cultural references is an entertaining puzzle.

ALL YOUR PDN ARE BELONG TO US

MASSIVE IGUANA! My day is now improved. Thank you, Diki.

361. Displacer Iguana - Ironic art and translation mix-ups [EDIT: sniped by owenrus] 337. Devoid Man Devoid - An unhappy beginning These are the only ones left, so I might as well just blindly guess. If this isn't correct, then they must be 361. Displacer Iguana - An unhappy beginning 337. Devoid Man Devoid - Ironic art and translation mix-ups It seems sort of poetic that "An unhappy beginning" should be one of the last two clues to remain unsolved.

345. Heart like swords and pool on the - In context, an expression of overintellectualized pain Process of elimination; nothing else it could go with (this PDN has been guessed with the other two remaining clues already).

345. Heart like swords and pool on the - Ironic art and translation mix-ups Because in addition to the lyrical meaning of the PDN when it occurred with its preceding and succeeding PDNs, it could be misinterpreted in a vacuum to talk about swords shaped like hearts and the game played with cues and colored, numbered balls? 334. Angel of Cacophony??/? - Other side of my secret identity, maybe Is there a connection to Slartifer here, with an allusion to Milton's Pandemonium or something like that? Or else an allusion to being the "Demon of Good Taste," where the "other side" is, A. angelic, and B. something usually considered in bad taste (cacophony)?

I'll just award myself an A for Effort and move on...

362. Oracle of the Pills and Raves - Paper airplane domination? Oracle is a company known for creating applications that deal with "the cloud," thus metaphorically putting them in the sky where airplanes would be. Doing things electronically also tends to reduce the use of paper. Together, then, one could stretch and see how that is "paper [and] airplane domination." The question mark in the clue shows how unsure I am about this explanation. The PDN also seems to be a reference to the Matrix movies, which had the famous Red / Blue Pill choice, weird rave scenes, and an Oracle character (who was a computer program, probably not coincidentally). I keep thinking of different oracles, present, past, and fictional, and this is the best I've got.

"Just a pile of unhappy words" - I keep wanting to find way to make this a reference to the goofy Castlevania quote "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets." Unfortunately none of your PDNs seem to have anything to do with Castlevania. Alas. "A Miserable Little Pile of Secrets" *would* be a good PDN, though...

364. Dongan kasakuyan indo muu - Plea from the Cosmos The PDN is a quote from the Mothra Song; it talks about calling for help, and is sung two faerie characters sometimes called the Cosmos.

Then: 335. To Protect and Serve Man - Solving two humanitarian crises with one expatriation program Again, drawing on the police motto and the Twilight Zone ep.: the expatriation program is a reference to the aliens taking people away. "Humanitarian" may also be a clue that it's linked to the PDN with "man" in it. There are a couple of other PDNs like this - I know what the PDN is about, but I have no idea what clue goes with it.

335. To Protect and Serve Man - Ironic art and translation mix-ups A translation problem re: "serve" is key to the plot of the old Twilight Zone ep. To Serve Man. The PDN also refers to the famous police motto To Protect and To Serve. I’m not sure how art fits in, though.

Thinking about words... 334. Angel of Cacophony??/? - Beats fall apart Cacophony refers to discordant noise...such as might happen when musical beats get messed up.

348. And this one was much shorter. - A small rebellion rebellion It's a pun - alluding to the BoE scenerio - juxtaposing "small" and "short."

Aww. I was really proud of that connection. It at least seemed plausible...

340. Crouching Ihrno Sleeping Dragon - Elf queen of Glastonbury Grove The Ihrno (mage) is Morgan le Fay, sometimes referred to as queen of Avalon, which is sometimes identified with Glastonbury Tor. According to the tale, King Arthur (surname Pendragon) went there to rest and heal (hence Sleeping Dragon). The title is also a reference to the film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

339. No sad sunny day nor any frightful bright place - Hymn in praise of Magus This one was a lot more straightforward than I realized. It’s just a quote from the Ode to Magus in the timeless classic, Chrono Trigger.

360. Cloaca of Uncertainty and Error - The glory and shame of the universe, or at least the compiler This riffs off a quote by mathematician/philosopher Blaise Pascal.

Wait, that says "Qaking." Somehow I've been misreading that as an O all this time. Then the game being reference is Final Fantasy, which used that idiosyncratic spelling. Still not sure how teleportation is involved, though.

Not sure about this one: 355. Dam Canals - Natural for a liquid Dams and canals are both structures used for controlling liquids. This one I’m more confident about: 354. FEAR and QAKEing - Existential spell options (you can't teleport) I knew this seemed familiar – it’s a reference to Fear and Trembling, the book by the Existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. It’s also probably a reference to a pair of video game spells, but Fear is generic and I’m stumped by “Oake,” so I have no idea which game he has in mind.