Ceiling Durkheim

What Lilith said. Also, good luck getting the Infiltrator's Charm in G5.

http://lolthulhu.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/internet-ya_rlyeh.jpg

I find it odd that "Rebellion" was the subtitle for Geneforge 4, rather than 3.

As long as you get the tinker's/infiltrator's items 10 of each should be fine. There's one area that is utterly horrendous if you don't have 12 leadership, but there are 3 pieces of "Infiltrator's" equipment, each of which gives +1. I can't recall if there's anything in the game that requires more than 12 leadership.

Speak for yourself. I found it tedious to examine every patch of wall in turn*. I spent as much energy on Piercing Sight as on most other spells combined. *(Well, maybe not every one. Sometimes game geography cues the locations of secret passages pretty well. Though even then that often means 'one of six possible spaces' instead of 'one of thirty possible spaces.')

That build sounds pretty viable. It's pretty much the standard shaper/lifecrafter build, and is such because it works and plays to the class's skills. It's worth it to put some points into leadership and mechanics (which may be where the points that aren't those "most" go), but aside from that your character sounds good. It's possible to ignore battle magic through most of the game, then take it up later on when you get high-level items. Some will give you really strong bonuses to magic, especially various of the artifact gauntlets. Mental magic is a much better investment than battle for shaping-focused characters: you have creations that can do nearly everything that battle magic can, if not quite as well, but many mental magic effects are only available through magic and items. Also keep in mind that Quothe in Haria-Kel sells training in magic and spellcraft. The magic skills are a bit pricey for most classes (~2000 with the quest discount = 2000/1000/500 per skill point), but spellcraft is a pretty good deal (~2500 with discount = 833/625/416 per skill point).

Are you suggesting that the Sholai will travel through space, insulting every being in the universe in alphabetical order? I'd hate to be a small slug of the genus A-Rth-Urp-Hil-Ipdenu in such a case.

Not generally, no. Then again, most people will have a fairly competent mage by this point in the game. My suggestion for this situation is Terror. You can't use the spell, apparently, but hopefully you have at least one terror wand. Enemy casters tend to have high mental resistance, but they're not immune to mental magic like undead, constructs, and the like are. Terror is especially useful if you can hit him with it before he casts that obnoxious spines/regeneration spell. It may take a few reloads to get it to work consistently, but that doesn't seem too bad compared to an hour-long battle. As stated above, charming his summons is very helpful, though if you can scare him enough he won't be summoning much.

I can't speak to the original (which I only got about half-way through), but in N:R Clouds of Night was doing a bit more damage than crystal wands (150-180 vs 140-160), and hit five targets. Granted, only Celts can use it, and you hemorrhage energy draughts/elixirs if you use it frequently, but for hard fights it's much stronger than wands.

I can but await the horrors of AverForAdon, then.

I've gotten near-instantaneous replies with registration codes, even in the Ungodly hours. So either it's automatic, or Jeff and co. keep a schedule as messed up as mine own.

My understanding is that HER increases everything but armor (physical resistance), though I wouldn't swear to that. ...Checked in A6 (my A4 saves got erased when my hard drive died earlier this year). Unless it's changed from 4 to 6, HER increases all resistances except armor. As for protection from weapons, I'm pretty sure you're wrong. I don't think A4 (or any of Jeff's recent games, for that matter) differentiate between types of physical damage. As far as I'm aware, protection from weapons is basically armor, except it increases only armor% instead of giving a bonus to fire/ice/energy/stun resistance equal to half the armor value.

"Roamers are, most likely, a highly modified breed of dog. The Shapers apparently decided, at some point, that a dog could only be improved by the ability to spit acidic saliva. Or to explode." -Illya Safehouse roamer dialogue; remains one of my favorite lines from the Geneforge series.

Greta, to some extent? Especially G3 Greta, who talked a lot about servile rights and seemed genuinely uncomfortable with many of the things the rebels did, even though she preferred them to the shapers. Greta in general seems to be one of the voices of sanity and moderation in the later Geneforge games. I also found the Awakened in G1/2 to be a bit hippy-ish, if we define hippies based on idealism and (by Geneforge standards, anyway) relative pacifism. The rebels of G3 and on seem to be much more based on Taker ideas, probably because the shapers kept massacring the Awakened.

Certainly leads to strange and interestingly (read: interspecies erotica) implications for Taygen and Leena.

Averforge? That one's new to me. Crossover between Spiderweb's series? Care to explain, or is it too terrible a can of worms to open here and now?

Sending Honesty Box comments to oneself on Facebook is also an excellent way to do this.

Are you referring to the Synergy list? If so, it's one of the links on Strategy Central, which directs you to http://www.spiderwebforums.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=98652#Post98652 If you search for "Jinx Blade" you'll find everything with that attribute. Though generally, most weapons with a special title in the description (Jinx Blade, Poison Blade, etc.) have some special ability associated with their attack. Well, except Heartstriker, which just does more damage.

In a literal sense, no. I've read the entire thread. More to the point, though: what you're saying is that my statements evince an ignorance of early parts of the thread. How so? My impression is that I was saying something similar to what the OP and many subsequent posters said, or at least a corollary to it. You can almost always knock off enemy HP by reducing game difficulty, but that's problematic if you want a challenge (well, a challenge other than "this enemy takes half an hour to kill"), since reducing game difficulty also reduces enemy damage. Enemies in A6 have too many HP for me (and apparently various others) in the sense that on higher difficulties, enemies do enough damage to be a serious threat to my party but also take forever to kill, while on lower difficulties enemies take a reasonable amount of time to kill but do trivial amounts of damage.

Honestly, even if it did (and I'm dubious about that) it wouldn't sway things in my book. Bless is a cheap, low-level spell, and since it affects the whole party it's not like random blessings are all that useful if you're not playing a singleton. 10% armor (which if memory serves is what 'protection from weapons' means, minus the bonuses that most armor gives) and HER is better than you see on most armors and accessories, let alone weapons.

I took perverse pleasure in carrying Sylak's Exuberant Trash around with me everywhere on a recent play. Particularly since I was playing a Celt party.

In which case, in a game that had balanced enemy offense and defense, enemies in said area would also do too much damage. Once again, this is less a problem of enemies having too many HP per se (since one can easily adjust that down by decreasing the difficulty), and more a problem of enemy HP and damage figures being out of proportion. Adjusting difficulty modifies enemy offense and defense, and so the 'right' amount of HP may not correspond to the 'right' amount of damage.

I thought your name said "Sylak" for a moment there. I was briefly very excited about acquiring self-reproducing trash and a pair of ironclad pants from you.

She doesn't restore your spells though, does she? I mean you technically get full HP restoration from dying, as well (Oh, Torment death mechanics), but I recall having to actually rest in order to regain spell memorizations.

I may be misremembering, but I think the Jade Halberd did physical damage with additional acid damage over time, meaning that even against acid-immune enemies it does the same damage. In which case the halberd is just straight up better, as the acid DOT is pretty useful, and the 10% hostile effect resistance is phenomenal. So yeah, I'd go for the halberd. Also, by the time you get these weapons, your hit chance should be high enough that the bonus on the bloodspear is basically irrelevant.