Triumph

Yes, a remake of Avernum 3 (which was a remake of Exile 3) is on the way. That's the current project.

Yes, that happens any time people post stuff off-site rather than on the forum if they don't maintain that offsite site (say, putting an editor in a file and hosting it somewhere rather than putting all the text into a spoiler-ed forum post), and it sometimes happened in the great forum update several years back. But you know, if you wanted to be helpful and not just make a pointless sad post, you could identify which links are broken so they could be fixed (if possible?) or pruned.

Might be handy to edit your top post to add the download there, so that anyone who finds this thread later can get the download and the instructions right beside each other.

Yes, Easss is an important figure in G2. #AlhoonneedstoplayG1&G2 I completely fail to see why any of this any issue. My inclination is to say "Duh, sometimes drakons get sentimental." Is there some particular reason why you'd assume drakons DON'T have any sense of sentimentality? I mean, they are clearly capable of emotions, so I'm not sure why we'd be surprised to find they (sometimes?) developed emotional attachments of some form (perhaps not quite the same as humans, but something similar). Alternatively, if you're dead set on drakons as alien beings who don't form emotional bonds like we lesser creatures, I think you could pass it all off as pragmatism. Tholoss and Litalia are deserters from the rebellion, yes, but they are still enemies of the Shapers. They are also, respectively, a drakon and very powerful shaper. Ghaldring is focused on directing all his resources to winning the war against the shapers. The whole "enemy of my enemy is my friend-ish" idea combines with the reality that it could be quite costly to hunt down and kill these two individuals. Ghaldring would be upset to hear anyone killed them because that means wasted time / effort / lives that could have been spent killing the Shapers, plus it means the dead individual could no longer be a thorn in the side of the Shapers. To be clear, I don't think this is the case, I think Ghaldring is just a little fond of Litalia and Tholoss, but if you wanted to, I think you could spin his words in this way without doing them too much violence.

Incorrect. I've tried it. You can go Rebel for the big choice at the end of Dhonal's Isle, then side with the Shapers for Gull Island, and you'll go into the Shaper endgame on the last island. If you were locked in by helping the rebels on the third island, you wouldn't be able to work with the Shapers on the fourth and fifth islands. I don't know what Jeff's intent was. G3 is actually weird among the Geneforge games for never offering any one obvious moment of choice to pick your alignment. You just show up on fifth island and you're on one side or the other. It may well be that Jeff expected folks would have made their choice through their gameplay actions, but there's no chose-your-faction moment like G1, 2, and 5 have. G4 is similar in terms of have more ambiguity about which side you're really one (but, then, the a huge theme of the game is that your double-agent status), though my recollection is that it was still more clear than G3 when you reached a point of no return.

In G3, the one and only thing that determines whether you are on the side of the Shapers or the Rebels in the endgame involves something on the fourth island of the game. How you resolve the conflict on the earlier islands can affect how you are viewed in the ending and it affects whether either of the totally optional NPC companions will stick with you the rest of the game. Separate from any of the above, you have choices to say nice things or mean things about serviles. This affects which people give you quests and who is willing to train you. Short answer: 1. you are not at all locked in to a faction yet, and 2. whether you choose to use more than six canisters will still make a difference in your game.

Yes, from my investigations of G3's scripts, it appears that six is the number of canisters you can safely use in G3. More than that, and a number of encounters will change (especially in the latter part of the game and mostly involving insignificant but flavorful dialogue changes, but also some that result in fights).

Vlish are where it's at in G3. Rush to reach the second island as quickly as possible, hoarding up your skill points along the way, and learn to shape Vlish, then throw all your points into Magic Shaping and intelligence in such a way that you can immediately conjure up a full seven Vlish, and then lead your army through the rest of the game. No joke, this is a serious, viable strategy. In the short term, you'll be a little short on essence for spellcasting, but that will work itself out soon. Meanwhile, your army will earn experience for the rest of the game and you'll never need to invest essence in your creations or in shaping skills ever again.

G3 doesn't have nearly as many NPCs as G2 did. There are just two main ones. As Randomizer said, about two thirds of the way through the game, one of those will definitely leave you no matter what. Although you can take whichever one stays with you all the way through the game, they are vastly weaker than creations. Creations in G3 - Vlish specifically - are quite strong and you'll get way more power of regular creations than either of the two NPCs. You can tote the NPC along if you want to (and there's occasionally interesting dialogue associated with them), but from a strict powergaming / optimization standpoint, they aren't worthwhile.

...but it's possible to change the screen resolution. In fact, a pop-up from the game prompts you to change resolution when you start. Does your friend not get that pop-up? Or not have the ability to change screen resolution at all for some reason?

Parry. Yeah, I know you're an agent not a guardian so it costs slightly more. But Parry. That skill is basically the definition of "powergaming" in G2 and you should be investing in it. You want to get it up to 18, which you can do by by raising it all the way yourself or stopping at 16 and then finding a certain cloak and pair of gloves that each boost you one more point.

The correct level is whichever one allows you to complete it. But seriously, there's no "official" level threshold. The crypt is an endgame challenge, though, so I would guess mid-to-high 20s was the "expected" level for players to tackle it. So yeah, "severely underleveled" sound about right.

Slarty: A fair point re: over-representation of disloyal Shapers in G2 - it was definitely deliberate, not just incidental (aside from maybe Sharon?). (Notably, Z and B did not start out isolated, but as Shaper enforcers, who went rogue and collected like minded compatriots). I also like your point about the impact of the war as a plausible explanation for scaring a lot of Shapers into compliance. To Alhoon: As you quoted me, I mentioned "sincere traditionalists like Alwan or reasonable reformers like Astoria." Those are two different categories - I was not suggesting Astoria was a traditionalist. I also never suggested Alwan is a flawless paragon of Shaper orthodoxy. I described him as a sincere traditionalist, that is, one of the most prominent examples of a Shaper character who espouses traditional Shaper views on shaping and creations, and affirmed he is sincere in those views (versus folks like Rawal and Taygen who at best pay lip service to those values. I think that to some degree your standard for judging Alwan is nonsensical. First, "Traditionalist" doesn't have to equate to absolutist diehard zealot. Even in G3 Alwan shows hints tempering his early zeal with pragmatism - and it comes through further in his willingness to work with the PC in G4. You can't say he doesn't perfectly keep to his code, therefore he's a total hypocrite who doesn't mean any of that Shaper blather he spouts. That's not logical, and that's not how real people work; real people espouse values and then falter in the face of temptation sometimes, but it doesn't mean they don't sincerely hold those values. Second, if "he didn't criticize me or attack me when I used a barred creation" is your standard of orthodoxy, then not one single Shaper in G3-5 is a "traditionalist." So I just don't think that's a reasonable standard at all. How many Shaper NPCs in G4 and G5 neglect to kill the PC on sight? I presume in your book that makes them all disloyal scum? Maybe you think Jeff should have made the game like that - but he didn't and clearly we aren't supposed to read too much into it. I'm not admiring Alwan or saying we can't criticize his choices. He's clearly young and confused and indoctrinated and struggling to cope with a world going crazy in G3; he's more mature but bending the rules in pragmatic bids to advance the war effort and save all he holds dear in G4-5. I'm saying we should see Alwan (at least by G4-5, not in G3 though) as a leading example of a "sincere traditionalist" Shaper *during time of war.* Question, Alhoon: which character(s) from G3-5 would you offer up as exemplifying Shaper orthodoxy, as demonstrating the loyalty and commitment to Shaper ideals that you find so lacking in Alwan and the other characters discussed above? Perhaps if I could see your standard of loyalty and traditionalism demonstrated in a particular character, I'd better apprehend your judgment on Alwan.

Only surprising if you buy the Shaper line the they strictly control everything and absolute loyalty is the norm. If, on the other hand, the truth is that the Shapers consist some relatively harmless dissenters whom the stodgy establishment ignores, some horrifyingly dangerous rebels whom the stodgy establishments doesn't effectively suppress, and a small cadre reasonable traditionalists like Shanti who are too few in number too make much headway, then it's not so surprising. I think that's the impression we're supposed to get. There is a counterargument, I guess. G1-3 take place in the fringes backwaters of the Shaper world (however many continents it has ) so you could argue that unorthodox Shapers naturally gravitated to those regions, accounting for the high proportion of not-entirely-loyal Shapers you meet in those games. Meanwhile, in the more settled parts of the Shaper world, orthodoxy reigns supreme. It's exactly those parts of the world you encounter in G4-5, and thus the reason you see more orthodox Shapers in those games. The rebuttal is that even if dissenter Shapers are drawn to the "Wild West" so to speak, that doesn't explain why the supposedly effective establishment fails so seriously at eliminating corruption in G1-2 once it finds out about it. Moreover, rogue behavior exists at the highest levels of power, as seen in G5 where both Rawal and Taygen, actual members of the vaunted Shaper Council, traffic in illicit shaping. I think they are the capstone to a strong argument that Shapers like them are the norm, or least common, while sincere traditionalists like Alwan or reasonable reformers like Astoria are the unusual ones.

Nah, didn't forget. That's why I said "hardly any rebel lifecrafters," rather than "none." The ones in the tutorial aren't even lifecrafters yet, not having used the Geneforge, and die in like five seconds anyway. Thus Jared, one rebel lifecrafter = "hardly any." I also left out Monarch from my comment above, but he's doing his own thing. Judging by G4-5 there weren't many Shaper defectors in the war, yes, but my whole point was this diverges from the portrayal of Shapers throughout the first three games! The first three games have a major theme of dissenter Shapers who depart from orthodoxy in one way or another (some going into all-out rebellion, others just disgruntled with the Shaper system and pointing to cracks in the edifice). In G3, you already know about Litalia, Hoge, Fanjul (the one Dhonal's Keep who cares about creations), and Greta. No real spoilers, but you're not done meeting less-than-orthodox / not-always-entirely-loyal shapers in that game, by any means (they aren't all outright rebels, but "loyal" is not a word you'd call them). Since it'll be many years until you play G1/G2 and you won't remember this list by them, those games include Goettsch, Coratta, Zakary (and some followers whose names I forget), Barzahl (and some followers whose names I forget), Tuldaric, Carnelian, Sharon, and a couple others - all Shaper characters of various levels of story significance who are not strictly loyal. Arguably in the first three games you meet at least many dissenting, law-breaking, and/or outright rebellious Shapers as you do steadfastly loyal ones like Shanti and Aodare and Rahul. How far out of bounds they go varies widely, from just speaking critically of Shaper rules to all-out rebellion. The key point is that for all the talk of strict Shaper control and loyalty, the Shapers actually have a HUGE problem with loyalty and with getting their own members to follow the rules. One of the themes of those games seems to be that the Shapers' own sins became their undoing - that between the inability of reasonable dissenters (a la Khyryk) to effect any needed reforms, the activities of corrupt Shapers unleashing new horrors and spreading dangerous knowledge, and the Shaper Council's massive failure to deal with this, the rebellion G3-5 came. For Greta to be the token sole former Shaper on the rebel side in G4 is a major shift. Perhaps Jeff had his reasons, but it's still a thematic departure.

The only non-Greta former Shaper who appears in G4 that I can recall is Khyryk. Poor fellow has vanished by G5, though. And he's emphatically not a rebel, just someone who has turned against Shaper orthodoxy. I guess maybe Litalia sort of counts, too? But she's her own special brand of crazy, AND I assume you are looking for more minor characters, not two of the biggest rebel NPCs. It was actually something that disappointed me about G4. Not only did the theme of defecting Shapers (whether because they are honorable or corrupt) that runs through G1-3 with multiple characters seem to drop off, but there were hardly any rebel lifecrafters to talk with either. It often feels like the PC and Greta are the only two non-drakon shapers the rebels have (well, there was Shaila, I guess) and I really wanted more chances to talk to the PC's "equals" on the rebel side.

Light serves no gameplay function. Its purpose is to reduce eyestrain as you try to figure out what's on the screen.

If you sign on with Gladwell, you'll be stuck with him for a long time; not until fairly late in the game will you be able to break free.

You are entirely incorrect. I saw the website in the question back when this happened. The game was original Nethergate. The distribution of original Nethergate is unquestionably what Jeff was condemning.

G1's intro does speak of apprenticeship, but it describes it as spending five years at a remote outpost learning and helping. So apprentice in the broad sense of student or learner, but not necessarily in the sense of having a specific master with whom one travels and learns (a la Shanti). Taking G1/2/3 together, I get the impression that one must engage in years of study (possibly at the elementary to high school age range? and perhaps only feasible if your family is rich or has a rich patron?) to get accepted to become a Shaper (or perhaps the Shapers operate the equivalent of elementary schools for purpose of identifying promising prospects?). That's what the G1 PC has just done. Then one goes off to a shaper school for several years of study and training under actual Shapers (that's what the G1 PC was on the way to do / what the G3 PC was in the middle of doing). Then one is assigned to a master (such as Shanti) for field training (as was the G2 PC) becoming a full-fledged Shaper. That would position the G2 PC as the most advanced of all Geneforge PCs in terms of progression toward becoming a full Shaper. Just my #2cents.

You can definitely beat some (all?) the games without doing ANY fighting. It takes some work, and I think most people go the fighting route, but it is possible. I beat G3, siding with the Shapers, without striking a single blow myself, and I came near to beating it the rebel route except that I'm 99% sure the game glitched out on me and removed a critical element of the endgame (a friendly NPC who was supposed to fight for me). Based on having played through G2 and G4 the regular way, I'm pretty sure one could also finish those games without personally doing any fighting. I've never played G5 besides the demo, but I would be surprised if the same isn't true. The only game where I think some fighting *might* be absolutely necessary to finish is G1, but I'm not at all sure. I should go back to the pacifist experiment again one day... Anyway, there are definitely some zones you cannot clear if you don't fight, but mechanics / leadership / sneaking past enemies / relying on friendly NPCs to do the dirty work does indeed offer a path to finishing (most / all) Geneforge games.

For A2CS, you list Morrigan as a Celtic goddess. But isn’t it more likely that Jeff got the name from the character in Dragon Age Origins - a game he talked about on his blog quite a bit - rather than just from reading Celtic mythology? (Apologies if this is already established somewhere; I searched and didn't see anything in this thread addressing this.)

Oops! My brain is not working. Thought you were posting the game was bugged. Yeah, if you're trying to mod the game and it's not working, then you're pretty much out of luck. Slarty (aka Nolookologie for today) is right.

You should probably contact Spiderweb directly, via email, if you hope anything might be done.

First, this is not exactly a super puzzle-heavy game. Second, don't feel bad about asking questions! Pretty much everyone on here has asked derpy questions at some point! (I certainly have...) You don't even have to spam the forum to do it - just a start a thread called "Achilles's A2CS Questions" or something like that and make a new post in it any time you get stuck. People will see and answer. Easy!