-silver-

the nearby village is blissfully unaware of the travails of the two outposts which quests might lead you to attack

she doesn't give you the key, she directs you to pick the key out of the chest just east of her

Quote: Originally written by Revenant: You probably won't have it the first time you meet an unstable mass, but lightning spray is pretty effective against them. er, I always found it best to a) try to hide so only one or two can attack at a time, and the exact opposite of lightning spray - concentrate all damage on ONE at a time, so you only get one split per turn (but then, I wasn't dazing. I should try that some day if I play again. or in av6)

of course they're within melee range, they have to be so that they can cast party-affecting spells.

Quote: Originally written by Randomizer: The pole weapon warrior is going to be your main damage source for physical damage. Er. My sword guy was doing twice to three times the damage of my pole guy (my party was: melee, pole+tools, priest+bows, mage+bows), and had more options to choose the kind of extra damage (flaming sword, ice sword, venomous waveblade) Quote: He runs out there and pins down the enemy so they can't reach the weaker spellcasters. In your dreams. They just run around him anyway and attack your spellcasters no matter what.

yah. the guy who tells you how to open the entrance says it's surrounded by four pillars, but your target is actually surrounded by six pillars.

yes, there is. it's on the same ledge as the scrolls. check the walls.

I'm not sure I understand. I had to go out of my way to see said drake (as in I only did so in an unsaved game)... so why not just never get near him? I don't even remember there being any useful treasure in the room. I mean, you don't strictly even have to follow the conversation thread with the mayor where you find out the drake even exists. does the geas prevent you from moving on to Tranquility or something?

clearly, the Empire's pylon system is using a different technology than the Avernite's system - the Empire ones were explained by Landsman in Muck as needing some time to warm up before the crystals could be installed. also the different technology involved is probably why they have different destinations.

a couple very teeeeeny leeetle ones, mostly in the realm of "less clicky clicky": * when you're on the inventory panel, hitting info/train should dismiss inventory and bring up the info panel, instead of doing nothing. and vice-versa (oops, just noticed this was in the original post. well, consider it seconded. and thirded). * the total armor % (and possibly the other resistances) should be visible on the inventory screen a couple others which just hassle me: * quicksave and quickload should be further apart than one key. aie this one has burned me sooo often. I lean towards f5/f9 but, then, the "hot keys" are in the function row, and that's not 4 apart, so I guess something else. * when you hit quit, X means don't save, OK means save. when you hit return to main menu, X means nevermind, OK means don't save... I think they both should have the same "save first?" semantics, so I don't have to remember to hit X sometimes and OK other times (because I never need the save dialog because I always hit f3 first. unless I miss and hit f4) and one for general assistance in understanding how one's characters develop (and when they can get special skills): * when you're on the info/train screen, clicking the "number" or maybe the "cost" part should replace the skill description with a summary of how many points you've gotten via expenditure of SP and how many you've gotten from your race and traits, how many you've gotten from books, how many you've gotten from trainers.

I miss being able to view my current equipment while considering what equipment to buy.

I don't follow all these forums very closely due to time constraints of work, but I do lurk around the newest game when it comes out

er, I've had to change providers for silverchat.com and the new one doesn't get my email. but there's this nice "private message" feature on this forum. or silverkitty23 (at) yahoo (dot) com.

Quote: Originally written by Haemotode: 1: In E1 Wands of Carrunos have a range of 0 and are therefore useless. In all other Spiderweb games they make enemies stronger. I didn't check in N:R, but I assume the result is more health and possibly buffs for your foes. Don't use the wand. out of curiosity, wouldn't using the wand on a foe increase the experience reward for killing it?

This thread now falls under http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin\'s_law . two or three times.

the eyebeast is behind the blue circle in the NE. you can check this doing showmeall in the level. -- the pink circled door in the lab just connects to the pink circled door in the big room, it's there for "this is how the drakons would get back and forth 'realism'" but it's not meant for you and I to use -- the SE doors, they don't lead to squat. or, rather, they lead to "the rest of quessa-uss," where the Drakons live... filed under "not appearing in this adventure"

Quote: Originally written by Sir Spiff: You needn't ride them in battle. You'd just have to get off during the fight. Or duck. Oh, if you want hoplars instead of cavalry, then fine -- your wish is granted: you already have a horse -- your characters have always had horses since GF 1. You just ride them when you travel between zones, but each zone is a combat area, so you tie the horses up at the zone edge...

I just have to giggle whenever I see people write, or hear people say, "how hard can it be?" Small changes to code are never as straightforward as one thinks they should be - subtle new interactions crop up all over the place (just ONE example, purely off the top of my head: does your new script now perhaps allow people to skip encounters by killing their steed in the right place and re-spawning outside the rectange? well, gotta test for it to make sure...) Small changes to game balance are never as straightforward as one thinks they should be, either (just ONE example, not definitive, not complete. refuting it doesn't "win" anything. all the really good examples wouldn't be discovered until beta testing after its implemented, anyway, but: do steeds give the player more AP? if not, then how are they "faster"? if they do, then haven't you just made the player into a minor demigod?)

actually, I emphasized "drakons" in that quote because of this exchange on page 4. Suspicious Vlish wrote "Then why would Ghaldring mention that he would use the Unbound to shelter the Rebel creations/humans in the mountains? If he had no empathy for the lesser races, why would he make such an irrelevant comment?" to which Tullegolar replied, "Ghaldring is a liar. He'll say anything to prove his point. Does it even make sense for the Unbound to protect something? It was very clear that they blindly destroy, and are incapable of much else." to which Stillness replied, "He strikes me as too honorable to lie like that. ... He is not lying. The Unbound are directed by the Drakons and can be stopped by them as well. They do the job exactly as promised. I think you're just making up stuff at this point." --- so I pointed out that in the game, Ghaldring never claimed the Unbound were going to shelter jack squat. He said the drakons would do the sheltering. Tullegolar was correct to say that a misquote started a thread where Unbound were portrayed as and then refuted as protectors. I quoted a bit of Ghaldring's speech in an attempt to quell that subtopic. I said as much just a few posts ago. We can drop this subtopic now

the tactical advantages of cavalry over infantry only hold in pre-gunpowder armies. since then, guerilla warfare has ruled whenever applied. think of shaping as gunpowder. (edit: before someone jumps on me: to be fair, I left out years of gunpowder armies which included major cavalry divisions... but those armies were using guns as fancy crossbows and trying to keep the old style. until the American revolution showed them up so badly... and on the other side of history, I left out that before the the invention of the stirrup, cavalry weren't particularly useful - the roman army used cavalry for mop up and show, but the phalanx was tremendously more powerful. the history of warfare is rather more complex than I am putting in this post, and I shall have to suffice to say that cavalry had its moment, but wasn't always superior to infantry, and didn't remain superior to infantry forever). (edit 2: the shapers aren't joking when they say "a single shaper IS an army". just look at how much the player destroys over the course of a game. put my opponents on horseback, and they'll just die faster because they'll get closer to me sooner. in range of my fyoras and daze spells, or my drayks and essence orbs, or my wingbolts and aura of flames (depending on the chapter )).

I think the analogy is that Shaping is like nuclear or biological weapons. even libertarians are for a limits to such crazy powerful weaponry. the trakovite cause IS the libertarian cause -- no one can be free to live their lives how they like while everyone is tossing nukes.

I'm not arguing that they are superior. I'm arguing that the use of superior/inferior is a false dichotomy. I believe that the race of drakons is a race of individuals - some of whom are good, some of whom are evil. Just like the humans. I summarized my argument back on page 4 of this thread "overall, the combination of these quotes is a stalemate to the argument. Neither side is more or less powerful, and neither is more or less capable of evil and good, or of brutality and art, or of arrogance and compassion. It all comes down to the individuals." (aside: I emphasized drakons in that quote because somewhere I had read something about unbound guarding people and someone saying "I don't think the unbound would be very good guards" and I was pointing out that it was the drakons, not the unbound, who were going to do the guarding)

neither side can "win", I don't think, and meet JV's vision as I understand it. if I may spoil, the gf4 shaper ending speaks of _centuries_ of peace and the final words are "until the next rebellion." that's not a good jumping off board for the next-game-as-a-final-game because it's no more compelling than just starting over with gf1. on the other hand, the rebel ending of gf4 ends with the shapers and drakons in the moral equivalent of an ongoing biological war, escalating constantly with nothing but devastation for all the "regular people" around, and the final words are "who can bring the peace?" That's a new and compelling premise for gf5. ergo, I conclude that the "real ending" of this one is the rebel ending or a close modification thereof - it's the ending that gives gf5 a way to go somewhere new in the series, and a way to end the series (clearly, the new hero of gf5 must be instrumental in finding a way to bring the peace).

when you enter quessa-uss it says: "It all looks recently constructed, hastily built by drakons, serviles, and magic. There are empty depressions in the walls, waiting for mosaics or other artwork. The touches of luxury are waiting until after the war ends." My assumption based on that description is that drakons did design, maybe lifted some of the heavier things that serviles couldn't, and performed magic as part of the construction. The serviles were likely relegated to hauling bricks and boards. I say that because the drakon arrogance implies to me that they wouldn't trust the serviles with designing a home for drakons.

(just as a historical side-note: in Caesar's Rome, 'dictator' was a specific title granted by the Senate with specific duties and responsibilities -- while the word is the root of the modern word 'dictator', it meant Significantly different in nuance then than it does now).