Untamed Banana Slug

Armour with golden crystals or any damage reducing augmentation, weapons that increase resistance (charmed falchion is the best weapon for a sorceress IMHO)and cursing your opponents with vlish. Armour is very effective in Geneforge 5, you can effectively become a tortoise.

 

On the flip side, killing your opponents quicker and incapacitating them (daze, terror, charm) helps reduce damage. Dominate/charm is very useful for drawing fire away from you and your creations. Charm an individual in the middle of a mob, and the mob will focus fire on him instead of you!

 

Mass Madness is golden. It won't charm the very powerful foes such as bosses, although it will slow them. What it will do it charm all of their henchmen, which is just awesome. Very good if you intend to fight Taygen.

I was using a vlish bolt to curse my character.

 

Edit: Perhaps this is an argument for keeping vlish until the end game? 30 essence for an unlimited supply of curse spells (with extra damage!) is a bargain.

Parry is not worth investing in, although you can always buy a few points from Rawal's trainer. I wouldn't worry about luck either. It's nice to have from items, but those points would be better spent on mental magic/spellcraft.

There ya go. The drakons has a strong presence in the Dera Reaches, as even one Shaper is an army. This is demonstrated by all the Unbound and rogues directly outside the capital of the Dera Reaches.



How so?



Which ones? Glaahks? Kyshakks? Because in the final battle against Ghaldring, three regular Shapers are just conjuring them up in minutes.



Precisely. The Drakons besieging Shaper territory? Weakened sufficiently to kill with ease. The Unbound ravaging Mera-Tev and Dera Reaches? Also weakened. The rogues swarming across every Shaper province and killing innocent civilians? Gone. The rebellious serviles? Gone.

The purity agent is essentially salvation for the Shaper Empire, much as the Unbound was salvation for the Rebellion. So it boggles the mind that the Shapers were so staunchly against it because, wait for it... they consider creations to be their 'children', despite the previous four games implying the exact opposite. And they also forget about the many outsider humans and Shapers they could save if they just released the purity agent.

If you're going to commit genocide, at least do so in a fashion which causes minimal loss of life to those you are claiming to protect.



I'm not sure what you're trying to get at here.

Pure magic. Melee is redundant.

You mean the physical damage they resist? I incorporated that into the damage dealt.

Edit: You're also forgetting that curse lowered to hit by 15%, whereas war blessing raised it by 20%. Which further supports the interpretation that curse lowers attack strength by 3, whereas war blessing increases it by 4. War blessing also increased attack output by 4 levels.

Yes.

Were you playing as a lifecrafter? I had about 22 intelligence as a sorceress, and didn't have over 1000 essence.

How did you get so much essence?!

Essence blades is 50 essence, so I'd leave 150 essence in reserve, that will leave you with 100 essence to play with (5 mass madness spells! ).

As many as possible while still retaining an essence pool that allows you to cast mental (and to a lesser extent, battle) spells. I'd say you should have about 100 essence spare, and the rest should be spent in creations.

 

On the other hand, having essence blade on your main character is just unbelievable, it almost doubles damage output (my essence lances were hitting for 400+ when blessed and essence bladed), so if you want to have your agent as a primary damage dealer, maybe you'd consider having higher essence reserves to accommodate for essence blades. Casting essence blades on your creations probably isn't worth it though, just use chaotic spores.

 

In summary, be conservative with your essence pool. Having one less creation is less detrimental to your well being than running out of the essence you require to charm/daze foes. Running out of essence mid-fight *sucks*.

War trall, war trall, war trall. I think you can purchase it from the drakon in the Dera Reaches (south shore).

As an added bonus, I tested war blessing. It does increase attack strength by four, which is consistent with what is stated in the documentation.

I wouldn't worry too much about combat skills, I'd stick with pumping mental magic, and to a lesser extent, battle magic. You'd probably need more endurance and strength.

As long as you have war tralls and a terror/charm/daze which works 95% of the time, you're set. Don't worry about sinking points into fire or magic shaping, there's no need.

I used the Captain's shiv (Damage: 4-16, damage multiplier = 2.5) to wail on my battle alpha. The results are as follows.

 

Torment, not cursed:

 

Average damage = 35.1

 

Torment, cursed:

 

Average damage = 19.9

 

Difference = 15.2

 

Multiplier of curse on Torment = Approx. 6

-----------------

 

Normal, not cursed:

 

Average damage = 17.2

 

Normal, cursed:

 

Average damage = 9.8

 

Difference = 7.4

 

Multiplier of curse = Approx 3.

-----------------------------

 

From this, we can conclude two things:

 

1. The documentation is wrong (again). Curse reduces attack strength by *three*, not four. This isn't just supported by damage output. When I was cursed, my accuracy decreased by 15%, not 20%. 15%/5% = 3.

 

2. Curse is doubly effective on Torment, which implies that damage that your PC and creations receive is doubled. So for every die of damage (or level of attack strength) you receive, double that on Torment.

Yes. There are rogues *everywhere*. There are rogues right outside the city gates, for Christ's sakes (bugs to the east, an entire assault force to the south).



I've played through Drakon, Taygen and Alwan. I've read through the ending text for Litalia and Astoria.



But there are rogues perfusing many of the paths to the Citadel. Even an Unbound manages to make it along the Citadel's North Road.



Yes, stalemate, although I guess you could argue that the rebels are winning. Rebels have strong footholds in several Shapers provinces (the Mera Tev and Dera Reaches), whereas the Shapers apparently have no footholdd in Rebel lands.



Yes. Remember the glaahks in the Hatra ruins and those borer bugs outside of it? The assault in the Perkalia Orchards? The bug infestation outside the north gate? The podling crossroads full of, well, podlings.



They took a small amount of ground back, and that's about it. Rogues lay all three of their mountain fortresses to siege, and Rebels are deeply entrenched in their lands.



Not really. They'd just recreate new ones, which is exactly what they do. As we've seen in the game, experienced Shapers can apparently create swarms of creations in a short period of time.



"First off, comparing the Shaper world to ours really doesn't work. When's the last time you saw a fyora hanging around outside your window?"

With items, maybe 15+ in mental magic, 15+ in spellcraft, 18+ in intelligence.

You're forgetting that he was responding to another member's condemnation of Avernum 3's engine. And he makes some good points. Personally I prefer the Exile engine to the Avernum engine, but there are some advantages that Avernum offers over Exile, it's just a matter of priorities. One thing in particular which caught my eye was this:



Thuryl passes the above off as a short attention span. I don't. Having to continually enter combat mode to fight enemies that were vastly inferior to you was a pain in the ass. It wasn't just a waste of time, it broke the flow of the game and added to the tedium. Giving the player the option to kill weak enemies in town mode is an obvious advantage of Avernum over Exile.

I think the answers given here may be incorrect. From memory, Divinely Touched only gave you a few lacklustre abilities in Avernum 1 and 2. It was improved in A3-A5.

You're not making creations? That is why you are finding the game so difficult. Go get the Volcanic Fetish and Shaper Robe so that you can create War Tralls. You might want to equip some items which boost mental magic and spellcraft, as you'll have difficult dazing/charming/terrifying anything late in the game with those stats.

*Precisely*

I'm not claiming that servile life is superior/inferior to human life, but am pointing out that the reaction of the Shapers to the Purity Agent is inconsistent with their beliefs and actions throughout the entire series. The fact of the matter is that from GF1-GF4, the predominant view is that the creations are mere tools, and the lives of humans (especially Shapers) are worth far more.

If the Shapers believe that, then they should be quite willing to release the Purity Agent if it means that preservation of human lives and the integrity of their Empire. Remaking creations is a large inconvenience, but having rebel serviles, Unbound and drakons scorching yours lands and killing loyal humans is infinitely worse.

Except that the Shaper Empire is close to destruction. Unbound and rogues are running freely throughout the lands, drakons are lodged firmly in the Dera Reaches, there are Secret laboratories under the Shaper capital cities, and both routes to the Shaper citadel are blocked.

If you are a Shaper who has to choose between lots of dead creations, or lots of dead humans, Shapers, and the possible destruction of the Shaper Empire, don't you have a responsibility to release the Purity Agent?



Things are pretty desperate for the Shapers in GF5. Granted, they are in a stalemate with the Rebels, but their people are suffering horribly and rogues are everywhere.

How would we determine that?

The serviles *are* rebelling in Geneforge. If the Shapers of past generations were justified in targeting all drayks for extermination because *some* drayks rebelled, why isn't Taygen justified in doing the same for serviles?



So why didn't you vote for Taygen? As I pointed out in my previous post, Taygen's ending brings a decisive end to the war that results in minimum loss of human life. Alwan's ending results in a war of attrition where the rebels become more and more desperate, producing an escalation of the bloodshed. And it isn't even a complete victory, the rebels still have the Ashen Isles!



And what will they do if there is? The Ashen Isles is an island fortress. Trying to take it would be the equivalent of an assault on Japan, there would be massive casualties.