wackypanda

There's Burkes (GF4), a minor guy you can betray to the Shapers.

Welcome to the forums. Please leave your sanity at the door.

I haven't been doing it extensively and still don't have any runs I'd be proud of, but I have found that you can get infinite skill points as well as stat points. Take the Nimble Fingers trait, then click where the minus button would normally appear under Tool Use. Make sure to remove the Nimble Fingers trait afterwards so that you can use it again when you level up. You can only allocate 3 points per skill at level 1 and 1 point per skill per subsequent level. If you generate more skill points than you can allocate, you won't be able to commit changes. Since traits open every 2 levels, skill points should only be trained every 2 levels, to maximise the use of the exploit.

With both stat and skill point exploits, a singleton would be faster than a full party.

Enjoy your first playthrough.

5 hours ago, alhoon said:

The dude with the book is doing research on non-Shaping magic, which GF2 tells me it's allowed (despite the Shapers being pro-regulations in magic). I don't want to check the scripts though, cause I haven't done much in that zone. It's a person name Ciphar, in the "Western Mines" and has a book on spells.

 

9 hours ago, TheKian said:

From canon in-game sources, we can be fairly sure that healing magic doesn't actually count as Shaping. The specific example of which I am thinking is the servile keeper (a normal outsider) in Drypeak in Geneforge 2. For bringing back the serviles from the mines, she teaches you cure effects, and mentions specifically that she was taught it. Though Zakary is hardly a great example of a Shaper, he certainly wouldn't have given an ordinary servile keeper permission or training to use any sort of healing magic if it were Shaping.

9 hours ago, alhoon said:

Ahh... GF2 is kinda sloppy with this kind of thing. Sure, it is in canon, but it kinda goes against much of the established game lore. It was probably a quick way to give the PC something valuable like "cure affliction", so I wouldn't put much faith in this. Shapers were controlling of the magic after all, so teaching even firebolt to a non-licensed person would be controversial. GF2 kinda states and then later contradicts that too, as you find a book an outsider has in his pursuit to learn magic, which the text says is considered legal.

  The Astoria smith that works essence to make Shaped blades says that his work could be considered Shaping and he may find himself in big trouble.

This could be a retcon, or it could be that the Shapers were initially more relaxed about non-Shaping magic (which in this case seems to include basic healing magic) and grew more controlling over time. Remember that what you consider the established game lore is from the chronologically later games. If this isn't just a retcon, I'd postulate that the thought process was "They're not creating life that can act independently of them, it's fine" > "But a lot of magic involves manipulating essence" > "Outsiders could teach themselves how to Shape" > "Shut down everything". Which would also explain what the Astoria smith says.

I'll guess that the more severe the injury, the more knowledge of anatomy (which Shapers would study as a matter of course, but not many other people would) is required, and the more Shaping-like the healing magic required becomes.

In G2, joinable party members past the Secret Tunnel can be kept around for the entire game if they don't suicide themselves. It's the later games where they come and go.

Do creations (and party members) with a higher level than the PC gain experience based on the PC's level, or their own?

A tangent:

I have talked to Alwan with Drayks, Gazers and Drakons in the room. Not a word of protest. And it's not hard to put a script command there to say "Alwan looks at your forbidden Creations and frowns. He doesn't approve.". I dare say it's not that hard to put a script command that if a Drakon, Gazer or Drayk is within the same room with Alwan he would turn hostile.

This is true of all Shapers in all of the games. One can also argue that drakons should object to you making drakons, but they don't. We can't draw conclusions from this, for the same reason that we can't draw conclusions from the fact that no one says anything when you rob them blind by closing the door of their bedroom behind you.

Adding to Slarty's point, most of the pro-servile (as opposed to corrupt like Z and B or wilful neutral like Sharon) defectors in G2 listed here are Awakened rather than Takers. It's much easier for a Shaper who has unorthodox views on creation rights to get into that kiddie pool, so to speak. But does this also explain why NPCs like Mooralas, who were already committed in G3, don't appear in G4-5?

One way to show continuity, I guess, would be for someone like Carnelian to show up in G3. (I think the time gap between G2 and G3 is larger than between any two other games, but I'm not sure, and anyway Carnelian is stated to be young in G2.) High on canisters, as usual, but still willing to talk about how once upon a time, she believed that creations could convince Shapers that they had rights, until they were all killed in Drypeak. Now she believes that war is the only way. This process would be similar to how one of the Obeyer serviles appears in an Awakened town in G2. As it is, the pro-rebel Shaper defectors in G3 all come across as self-serving jerks instead of as people who genuinely believe that the terrible things they are doing are necessary (but that is another topic on its own).

@wackypanda: Are you talking about Khogarth in the Fort on Greenwood Isle? Cause I just did him....er, by which I mean, I just did the scene with him, and I got no message about alignment change either way, though the dialogue indicates you go Shaper both for getting him to back down, and for killing him. Either way though, I don't think this is too harsh, as you can go through all three previous options before the Alignment choice, and one of them is literally just to walk away, and he stops you from doing so. At that point, he's gone a bit too far, and while killing him is harsh, this is an emergency situation, and he's accosting the only person capable of doing anything about it. And this is, again, after you tried to walk away, and told him to back down(While likely being an armed wizard, with two more as backup). I think that qualifies as too dumb to live.

That is him. But to be clear, there are two times you can tell him to back down: you can tell him to get out of your way instead of trying to walk past him (which has the same effect as trying to walk past - doesn't work) and you can say that he has no right to question the Shapers (which works and gives you + rep). Invoking your authority and power to get a belligerent man to leave you alone is perfectly justified. Killing him on the spot without consequences shows that the Shapers lack checks and balances on their powers.

Also, as a note that ties into the first post, you seem to lose(Again, I don't see a pop up, but dialogue says so) shaper points for lying to him.

The opposite is true. You don't lose rep for lying that the quarantine will be lifted, and if you don't have enough leadership to pull it off, Khogarth says that answer is "just like a Shaper". You do lose rep for saying that the quarantine is unjust.

Your scenario still has the basic issue that Diwaniya's quest solves Lankan's problem. No more rogues = all of San Ru is safe. For Lankan to be a legitimate choice over Diwaniya, Lankan's quest has to be more likely to solve Lankan's problem than Diwaniya's quest. I still had Diwaniya as a put-upon guy because I wanted to retain the major NPCs' personalities. If we don't do that, we could go as far as to make Diwaniya partially or wholly responsible for Lankan's problem:

In the interests of my hypothetical re-writes of G3, so as to join the party with everybody and their dog, are there any rebel NPCs in G4 and G5 who are defected Shapers apart from Greta, Litalia, and Khyryk?

Okay, I'll disagree with that, alhoon. Shanti and others tell you that it's not fear you want to use to keep others in line, it's awe. Yes, we do see the shapers reacting harshly, but mostly towards actual rebels, as in, those who have struck out against them. At least for humans, creations are different, and I'm going to ignore them for the moment. Heck, remember in 5, we find a guy in the stocks in Alwan's main fort, and he hit a commanding officer too. He was mostly going to be left there for a while, maybe with a beating(And a fine, but I think that just skipped over his jail time)

The one example of harshly punishing insubordinate humans I can think of is the event in G3 where you can kill a drunk guy who mouths off, with no consequences to you apart from +4 reputation (where + is pro-Shaper, - is pro-rebel). This suggests that the worst the Shapers would think of other Shapers who did this is "don't do that again, you idiot apprentice, you're ruining our PR" instead of "If you kill our subjects for such reasons you are not fit to rule", and some Shapers would even approve. Granted, this does not prove that Shapers who act this way are in the majority, and Lankan's scenario in its current state does not suggest that he's afraid of being unjustly executed.

I would approach re-writing Harmony Isle somewhat differently. The quickest fix is to add a dialogue option to say that you've killed the rogues, and give Lankan a response. Whether his response will make sense in context is of course more difficult to guarantee. (Fear of unjust execution can be plausibly inserted here depending on how it's presented, which I think was idonotexist's point.) For a deeper re-write, I would: 1) Give Lankan a problem that the rebels are not directly culpable for, because as it is he looks like an idiot for knowingly throwing his lot in with the people who caused his problem (and are therefore responsible for his friends' deaths) to fix his problem. 2) Make it so that Diwaniya's quest for you would only indirectly solve Lankan's problem at best, to justify Lankan's impatience and sidestep the whole issue of the game not giving you the option to tell Lankan that you've solved his problem.

For example (spoiler for skipping wall of text):

Edit for alternative scenario where the Shapers are somewhat less sympathetic:

G3 in general could have more varied gameplay and Shaper vs rebel dilemmas on the different islands if the rebels' entire strategy wasn't "moar spawnerz". Also, with the rebels' gene-editing magic (the major advance they have in their knowledge of Shaping vs traditional Shapers), you could plausibly write a scenario where rebels have experimented with making creations that instinctively target Shapers over outsiders, preserving their PR.

A tangent: In G2 outsiders could learn non-Shaping magic on their own. An outsider woman, the servile keeper, teaches you Cure Effects, and you meet a homesteader who has a book of Searer, that the narration explicitly says he can have since it's not Shaping. From G3 onwards it is a major plot point that all magic is controlled, not just Shaping. Is this just a retcon or did the Shapers actually become more controlling over time?

Diwaniya wouldn't have done much, maybe some prison time for Lankan. Which makes the whole situation all the more infuriating.

In the G3 Shaper ending Lankan's rebels are slaughtered if you haven't already killed them yourself. This could be because the Shapers lumped them in with the actual war-ready rebels and overreacted. But it's also possible that Diwaniya is in a minority when it comes to not punishing insubordination with death.

Do you currently have empty save folders numbered "Save0" through "Save19" and a file named "Geneforge4Settings.dat" in the saved games folder?

Sorry to bump this, but could anyone reupload? The download link is dead.

The most frustrating thing about Lankan is that the game explicitly asks you, via Norrell, to look for a diplomatic solution, and thinking about Lankan's claims for half a second suggests an obvious one. There should at least be a dialogue option to propose that solution even if that only leads to him explicitly rejecting it. He doesn't even have to give a sympathetic reason (although not having one will still add to the game's overall problem of not generating sympathy for the rebels).

On that note, I am incredibly late to the party, but I've made an unofficial v1.1.1 implementing some of the quality-of-life fixes from Kestral's list.

As noted below, all fixes, where I've even attempted them, have been done in the laziest possible way.

This is not intended to be and shall not serve as a promise of future updates.

Fixes confirmed by House of S:

a-1) Changed all short bows to use long bow ability, too. Now all bows have the chance of bonus damage so bows don't suck early.

a-2) Fixed Warmth Ring and other rings. Whoops. It does give melee damage in addition to the resistance. Just not 15%. 2%. :-P

a-3) Lightning scrolls already fixed, all radiate abilities were fixed.

a-4) Both ranged battle disciplines did not take levels of damage from an equipped weapon. Whoops. Now Flawless Shot should actually do the full 3.5 damage per level.

a-5) Increasing the bonus percents or base damage of ALL the direct damage battle disciplines.

a-6) Flawless Shot also fixed from causing ensnare which it wasn't supposed to in the remix (ranged battle disciplines have 2 variants, and one one was correct before)

a-7) Fix for bug that caused Bladeshield to give you weakness when it was not intended to.

 

 

Reports that I don't think were confirmed as fixed (some may not be confirmed as being real bugs):

b-1) Cloak of Curses level was listed incorrectly on the screen when you check buffs.

b-2) Possible problem with Splinter spell fixed (had issue with targeting at range which caused your turn to be wasted)

b-3) Re-balance Bronze Bracers vs. Fine Steel Gauntlets (in vanilla the bracers are strictly better despite much lower value)

b-4) Bug that caused Bladeshield to end your turn after use when it shouldn't.

b-5) "Incorrect animation for throwing javelins"?

b-6) "Pole weapons don't seem to have any sound effects indicating hit or miss"?

a-3, a-7, b-4, b-5, and b-6 are fixed.

a-2: Also fixed Ivory Band, now gives 15% mental resistance and 2% blessings/curses. I think this was intended because it had two values for stats to affect but had the same typo as the Warmth Ring. Correct me if I'm wrong.

a-4: Hopefully fixed.

b-1: Has been fixed in the most dangerous possible way, by changing its import to match its vanilla version.

b-2: Player targeting has been fixed. I have not done any testing looking at enemies casting it.

a-1: Too lazy to figure out how to keep enemies from getting the same damage boost.

a-5, b-3: Not touching balance.

a-6: Too lazy to untangle.

That is incredibly strange, because my warriors parry the radiating attacks every time I load the remix, and, like you said, never on vanilla. I could even catch them doing it on video if you like.

This could be related to a bug mentioned many pages back about needing to choose a target for radiating scrolls. Oh well.

I know this is no longer being updated, but I loaded an endgame save and found that my warriors parried the Hawthorne sentinels' radiating attacks. Is the ability to parry magic intentional?

Quickfire randomly spawning in towns has been reported before. I don't think a bug fix was ever posted. You might like to send Jeff an email.

Tried this on Normal for kicks.

One thing to add is that the Frozen Blade can be wielded in the off-hand to negate its drawback of taking hit chance from Intelligence instead of Strength. This adds another consistent source of non-physical damage. However, you have to rob Motrax and use a piercing crystal to get it.

Also, when fighting an enemy that can use Bladeshield, the Flaming Sword and off-hand Frozen Blade can be used to deal non-physical damage, but your melee fighters will get riposted. If there were more enemies who used Bladeshield one might consider having more ranged attackers in the party. Fortunately, the only boss I can recall who uses Bladeshield is Kyass, and 1) fighting him is a bit of a jerk move 2) he doesn't use Bladeshield for the whole fight anyway.

Does Cave Lore increase the probability of the "Do you wish to avoid them" dialogue appearing?

Is there a way to determine the starting health of a particular boss from its script? What should I be looking for?

Well, there's your problem. The southern exit is the passage to Drath. None of the portal rooms have a north passageway.

After you use the east portal in any room, check the north wall. Keep using the east portal until you see a secret switch on the north-east side. Then use the switch. If the switch does nothing, use the east portal again. If the switch does something, you have opened the way to Drath.

This should happen after using the east portal 4 times, although it's possible to lose track.

Something I've been playing around with for a while. How quickly can you reach one of the three endings?

A few thoughts:

Levels: I've been trying this with the stat allocation exploit described by Alex, with a twist. If, for example, you reduced Intelligence to 1 at character creation through this exploit, when the character hits level 2 you can take the Improved Intelligence trait again and reduce Intelligence again. However, Intelligence stays at 1 and you get a free stat point. You can get all relevant stats up to 40 this way, depending on your patience. (I haven't been able to allocate points past 40 with this exploit or the editor.)

However, even with the exploit and on Casual difficulty, rushing to the endgame areas involves a lot of plinking away at enemies with chip damage. Doing a few sidequests helps immensely. Done without the exploit, levels would be a greater concern.

Ending: Grah-Hoth with the secret corridor trick is probably the fastest.

Party composition: With the exploit, Dexterity and Endurance handle survivability. The issue is optimising for damage output. On my last attempt I used 3 dual-wielding fighters and 1 priest for buffing, healing, and range. My rationale was that the good mid-game and late-game swords are easy to get, and melee damage scales better with limited levels (+3%/level Blademaster vs. +2%/level Spellcraft, and use of Mighty Blows and Backstab vs. Elemental Focus only).

Any suggestions?

P.S. Not going to discuss the difference between using the stat exploit and using the character editor. I might try this without the exploit sometime.

Do you have to get the good Hawthorne ending to get the recap? Doesn't seem to show up when I do the bad ending last.

On my last playthrough I did the surface quest last and chose to leave. The ending then recapped my heroics in killing Grah-Hoth and Hawthorne. Is this recap unique to the "leave Avernum" ending or do you get it after doing the last of any of the three quests?