The Almighty Doer of Stuff

The dialogue system is much nicer in E2 (IIRC), E3, and BoE.

Fascinating! Yay learning!

I don't know what that means. I'm saying the open source BoE versions currently distributed do not work properly, but legacy BoE does, using this fix. At least this way players can still enjoy the community-made adventures again. I'm trying to make a new one, in fact, using legacy BoE,

Tool use is the use of lockpicks and disarming traps without setting them off. They require fine motor skills, a.k.a. dexterity. In RPGs it seems "dexterity" is used interchangeably with "speed" and/or "agility" but techically it refers to fine motor skills of the hands, like "ambiDEXTRous" means "able to use both hands equally well".

This works not just for the Exile Trilogy, but also for legacy Blades of Exile. (Not Open Blades of Exile.) All four games can be downloaded for free if you go to the Games section of the Spiderweb site, scroll down, and click "older games".

"it's not, by default, how things work" perhaps?

This seems to be phrased as a positive assertion though. I know that's not what you mean but "it's not how things work" is an assertion of falsehood, not one of ambiguity.

You're right, only about a third of items with goofy names are cursed or harmful. My mistake. It's emphasized in at least one conversation in Exile 1, in the Tower of Magi I believe, that the First Expedition had a LOT of magical gear and it was scattered about, but I can't remember who said it. I do know that magical equipment is very difficult to make in Avernum, and that most of what is found in Exile was brought down from the surface. Very little gear in Exile/Avernum 1 appears to be of Vahnatai origin, also. But yes, that Klin, Klud, Khar, Kag, Kron, Aescal, Vorb, and Augvah were the names of members of the First Expedition was speculation on my part. They could hypothetically be deities of some sort too, like Carrunos. I wonder, was Thralni the name of the guy with the Orb, or was that the Orb's creator/a deity and the First Expedition guy was just using it?

Certain special events can deal unblockable damage to the party, and I believe the Darkness Breath monster ability does unblockable damage, but I think that's it.

Glad you found it! It helps to hit U near every wall, if you can't find a switch. It indicates every usable object within view, so you don't have to keep your eyes peeled around walls that look like switches.

I mean items like Mace of Augvah, Bow of Kag, Helm of Klin, Shield of Klud, Aescal's Ring, Wand of Vorb, Orb of Thralni, etc. I didn't mean uniquely named items in general, but items with some person's strange name attached. Some of them are OK (like the Orb of Thralni) but most of them are harmful and/or cursed. And no, Ess-Eschas, NOT all of the First Expedition's items are accounted for. The useful ones are accounted for (eventually, but not as of Exile I) but there were lots of people on that expedition and they all had magical equipment. They were slaughtered to a man and a woman and their artifacts were scattered around.

Wound deals "unblockable damage". It's a separate damage type. It ignores all resistances and defenses, including physical, except for the Absorbs Magic ability, like Rakshasi have. It can even damage characters with the Invulnerable ability. Always be wary about items with weird names attached to them. They seem to have belonged to members of the First Expedition, who met grisly fates, and therefore most of those items are cursed.

You can keep a backup save if you're hesitant. :)

Regarding the baby slithzerikai:

It may be worth mentioning that creations are made fully-grown and ready to follow commands and go to battle. There must be some level of being able to give a creation a personality and active thought processes from the outset, wouldn't there be?

A brain in a talking ornk is more complicated than a drakon or a gazer...? I'm not familiar with the quest, but in what way is it complicated?

I think the whole original point of this discussion was whether or not upgrading a creation was feasibly possible within game lore for roleplaying purposes, not whether it actually is shown to happen. As you stated, Slarty, although the idea has no real evidence behind it, the concept is not clearly ruled out through any available evidence either, making that style of Geneforge roleplaying valid. There's no evidence that recreating an old creation in a new body is impossible or even difficult, just that it's not indicated. Would you say that's been established?

If you want to stick to only six creations, you can have a free slot in your party to shape the more advanced creation first, roleplay you're putting the old brain in the new brainless body, then absorbing the old body, and have the same character as output, while avoiding the issue of the disappearance and then recreation of the character.

Ess stated that the two processes are indistinguishable from the drayk/drakon's perspective, not as a whole. In both cases the drayk falls asleep and is a drakon when he wakes up. It doesn't necessarily matter to him what happened in the interrim, as long as the process was successful.

Personalities and memories are not encoded in DNA, though.

Blades of Exile and Blades of Avernum reward a variety of different party builds, especially between different scenarios. If you can get them to work and aren't deterred by the older game engines, those can be enjoyable.

Tangent: You could shape a better servant mind with superior memory function and recall speed, and then have the malfunctioning one relate everything it knows to the newer model, like upgrading a webserver to a better machine. That could be a good use for shaping a new, younger servant mind. Although I suppose if you want to upgrade you can just shape better function into the old one. What is their typical lifespan, anyway?

But you didn't acknowledge the possibility of not reabsorbing the brain at all, and just putting it into a new body, alhoon. As far as where the brain goes in-game, you are wearing clothes which are not accounted for with in-game mechanics. You can also hold onto the brain without it being an item or whatever, therefore.

It'd be like growing up. A baby experiences the world much differently than a teenager, and they both experience the world much differently from a mature adult. Massive changes occur in the brain through human developmental stages, so the newly-drayked cryoa would start with a cryoa brain, which would then adapt to life in its more advanced body and brain development capabilities.

What if you didn't absorb the fyora's brain at all, and just replaced the body around it, reshaping the brain to suit the new body but otherwise retaining the memories and personality, rather than absorbing its whole brain and its mind and then recreating them?