Triumph

Seven years later, I’m going to try to finish this. Finish what? In the tutorial section of each Geneforge game (except maybe G1?), Jeff basically says if you find the enemies too difficult, there will always be an alternative to fighting so that you can reach your goal. I wanted to test that and discover just what means he put in the game to get through without fighting. What if, hypothetically, somehow I created a build that was too weak to ever win any combat, how would I get through the game? I am relying stealth, mechanics, leadership, allied NPCs, and any other environmental features all the way, never taking direct action against an enemy. To my surprise, I found my saved game was farther along than I remembered. I knew I got through Harmony Isle (as the notes farther up in this thread reported, but I apparently cleared a bunch of Dhonal’s Isle, too. I don’t recall how I got through the bulk of Dhonal’s Isle seven years ago, but I’ll pick up where the saved game is and try to recount how I ninja my way through the rest of G3. On Dhonal’s Isle, I have cleared (turned green) every zone except Darkstone Core and Spharon’s Lands, plus the cluster of zones at the very western end of the island. Overgrown Road: sent the shaper army NPCs to attack, followed along using some healing and curing spores to give a little support (which in the end I don’t think they really even needed), but the NPCs did all the fighting. Searing Chambers: Just a matter of sneaking carefully and using mechanics. It’s a little tricky figuring out what path to follow through all the hazards, but very feasible. Creator’s Hall: You can complete this by either fixing or killing the Creator monster. If you side with the creator and repair it, it easily trounces Shaper Erika. If you side with Erika against it, things are more dicey, but she will kill it. I had to heal her and her creations multiple times, and heal myself repeatedly as well; had I not done so, the Creator would have won the day. Onward to the next island! Gull South Dock: just walk through and it’s clear. Cultists’ Woods: The first time you pass through, you can talk the guards on the road out of attacking you. However, that doesn’t clear the zone, and the next you come through, they will attack. Annoying, but oh well. I wonder if this is a bug? Beastkeeper Woods: can’t clear it, but can sneak through relatively easily. It’s annoying that you can’t clear either of the zones leading to the docks, though. Stonespire: a friendly town. Display Warren: This is a mech / lead / stealth zone, easily passable. Clawbug Infestation: it is possible to run through this underground zone (getting whacked quite a bit along the way), but it's rather difficult and isn’t really worth the effort. Breeding Caverns: start off with an application of Leadership and then focus on sneaking and you’ll clear the zone.

My guess would be that the names of towns just got changed, such that at one point Rising was the name of a Taker town but then got changed used as the name of the Barzite base, but the reference in Beka's dialogue got overlooked. Or maybe Jeff just forgot which town belonged to which faction when writing her dialogue.

Right. You should be able to go non-aligned and skip Zakary (but you'll have to take out Barzahl), or go Loyalist and skip Barzahl (but you'll have to talk to Zakary to join). Fascinatingly, the Barzite ending is the only route through the game that actually requires you to personally encounter both Zakary and Barzahl (the latter to join his group and the former to kill him).

Does anyone else know how to make sense of the servile you meet who calls herself Beka of Rising? She talks as if she's as Taker, in terms of rebelling against Shapers, yet Rising is the Barzite base. This happened in the zone before Secret Tunnel. I started a new G2 game to take Slarty's No-Zak Challenge and see if I could skip meeting Zakary. Turns out, you CAN avoid meeting him. When I got to Drypeak, I skipped following Shanti to Drypeak Warrens and instead I went all the way to the door in Secret Tunnel, where I got message telling me I couldn't get through and I'd have to talk to Shanti about it. She hadn't appeared in the house in Drypeak, which meant I couldn't tell her about the door. I entered Drypeak Warrens zone, then left without talking to anyone. I checked the house in Drypeak and BOOM, there's Shanti. I told her about the tunnel and then went back to it. The door was locked but passable after I raised Mech and found enough living tools. And thus I passed through to Freegate without ever completing the Locate Zakary quest in my log. I tried to end the game by returning to the Entry Valley, but get a prompt saying I haven't learned enough and can't advance to the end of the valley. Incidentally, as I walked through Entry Valley, I also met Shanti again! (The text popped up where she talks to you like at the beginning.) I'm not sure how much further one would have to play in order to be allowed to leave and trigger Major Ending 1, but I presume you could definitely complete Major Ending 4 or Major Ending 6 (i.e. joining the Awakened or the Takers) without ever completing the Locate Zakary or Locate Barzahl quests (obviously the Loyalist, non-aligned, and Barzite endings cannot be done without interacting with Z and/or B ).

If you've done the Wild Hunt sequence, just go back to the palace in the Halls of the Dead zone and talk to the boss again. However, since you talk about needing to go somewhere for a platform and a fight-or-flight activity, I think you're probably confused and haven't done the Wild Hunt yet. The platform you need to stand on is the northwest corner (i.e. the upper left part) of the Halls of the Dead zone.

Okey-day, I'm getting in the . Even though I still have no idea why Slarty is doing it again, the peer pressure is overwhelming. Every time I watch this, I laugh.

You're saying which servile faction you ally with, or whether you choose at one all, has no bearing on the ending? All three factions will always get some kind of ending, and the ending they get is not directly affected by whether you became allies with them? Very interesting. This is fantastic work, Slarty.

In each game where you meet Litalia (G3, G4, and G5), she tells you her origin story. And each time, that story is different.

Never trust a phony caco, that's what I always say. Also, I had no idea that playing the Wizard of Oz backwards would make it sound like they were speaking German.

Does this mean that you don't have to do anything at all (other than talk to Greta before you leave the Fens) to retain the option to play for the Rebels when you get to Burwood? Talking to Gen. Crowley can yield the following: Looking through the script, I don't see a comparable failure-and-rejection text from Greta. It appears that while you must prove yourself to the Shapers in either Ilya or Aziraph, your default status as a rebel will enable you to skate by, even if they do feel suspicious about you. Edit: if you don't open the Rebel path into Aziraph (by talking to the dude at the safehouse), does THAT lock you out dealing with the rebels?

The Ashen Isles are north of Burwood Province (i.e. north of the G4 map). You land around Poryphra at the end of that game.

Sadly, the single best argument for joining the rebels in G3 is Icy End...which is found on the last island after you've already been forced to choose your faction alignment.

There is no geneforge for humans in G2.

The most powerful thing to do in G3 is play a shaper with Vlish. When you get the second island, learn to shape Vlish and create a full pack of them ASAP, and the go forth and conquer. This post notes some of the reasons why Shaper is better than Agent for getting maximum value out of G3's Vlish. Basically, you want enough Intelligence to have enough essence to make 7 Vlish on Harmony Isle, and you want to raise Magic shaping as high as you can by the time you get there.

Not so much. There's a big difference between repairing damage & restoring something to its natural state, versus implementing permanent alterations. Healing craft is the former; canisters and the geneforges are the latter.

Nope, it's quite clear in G2 that the rotghroth is something new.

You do see the addition of Wingbolts, Kyshakks, and War Tralls to the creation arsenal, and I'm pretty sure it's clearly indicated that all of those were devised by the Shapers (all that done during the war as a response to the needs of the war). Also, technically, rotghroths, gazers, and drakons were NOT actually invented by underfunded, inexperienced rebels. They were also invented by a powerful, experienced, ambitious shaper named Barzahl who, judging by the state of his facilities, was actually pretty well funded (albeit funded by illicitly siphoning away resources meant for Drypeak).

Shaping skills only play a role when you make a new creature. If gear boosts shaping skill and does nothing else worthwhile, you put it on, make something, and then swap it out.

This is not entirely true. Guardians are *unquestionably* the most powerful class in G2 (the Parry mechanic when first introduced turned out to be a little over the top). Shaping is also probably the most powerful thing you can do in G5. (This is not to say any class is unplayable in any game, only that as the game mechanics shifted from game to game, certain classes or strategies would be "most powerful" for that particular game). Oh, and yes, the name is gene-forge, not jenna-forge.

I'm about 99% sure that being altered has no effect whatsoever on anything except your ability to use advanced spells / shaping (i.e. no effect on "canister count" nor any other effect on the ending. I experimented with it in the past and felt pretty confident on that point. I'm actually wondering if there's a glitch in the ending text. Notice that two paragraphs in a row begin "Finally, you finish telling your tale." Jeff is usually a better writer than to do something like that. I wonder if the "incomplete" paragraph is only supposed to show up if you left the valley without fulfilling a set of ending conditions, but is wrongly showing up in your ending.

Dheless was an interesting figure, but unfortunately I can't side with him without siding with the Wyldrylm rebels. And I find the Wyldrylm rebels to be incredibly, insufferably stupid and unsympathetic. Since I couldn't bring myself to betray Odil to the rebels, I had to forego being pals with Dheless. I guess it's sort cheating (or not?), but setting the game difficulty down to the lowest level definitely made beating Redbeard in Ava2 very feasible, even for me. Keep that in mind if your goal is just to see how the ending plays out.

Yeah, all the Geneforges are different. The first was made by master shapers to grant themselves demigod-like power. The next was made by drakons to grant themselves more power. The third was also made to power up drakons, but doesn't seem to work the same as the second-gen one. The fourth generation was made to grant humans OR serviles the ability to do shaping and magic. Although Rawal has *A* geneforge, but if I'm not mistaken it's never made clear what his geneforge was intended to do or who it was meant to affect. G5 also indicates that your character had been heavily shaped in your old life, so apart from the nuances of Rawal's geneforge, it's possible that something in how you were previously shaped alters the way the geneforge affects you.

Did you determine Shanti's fate and resolve it? I'm pretty sure something gets noted in the ending if you didn't follow through that plot thread.

I, for one, prefer to believe that the forums are dead and that Lilith, Slarty, and I are all ghosts haunting the forum.

Yes, yes, my point is that even though the average person doesn't read Edward Said, the scholarly critique of "imperialism" may have trickled down into popular consciousness enough to make "empire" leave a bad taste in people's mouths. Since "kingdom" hasn't received the same kind of negative press, it's easier for people to romanticize kingdoms, and out of all this would arise the curious good-kingdom / bad-empire trope observable in late 20th / early 21st century fiction.