mikeprichard

Ward of Thoughts is listed twice, while Ward of Steel should be moved to where the erroneous second Ward of Thoughts currently is. Great work!

Incredible and appreciated work, as always. Some questions as I plan my munchkin party:

1) Which of the below rewards add the listed skill points to all party members, and which only add the skill points to one party member?
     i) Drake Lord Blessing (1 point of Blademaster/1 point of Spellcraft)
     ii) Ivanova's "steal book" quest reward (1 point of Hardiness - not Resistance as noted in the list)
     iii) Daltrey's "hidden giants" quest reward (1 point of Lethal Blow)
     iv) Swamp ogres' "kill vampire" quest reward (1 point of Lethal Blow)

2) EDIT: I've confirmed that the Swordmage trait grants an additional allowed encumbrance amount for spellcasting purposes of 10% per trait point, as opposed to the 5% incorrectly cited elsewhere (see here under the "Traits" section for that incorrect cite). The 10% was also applicable in Avernum 1:EFTP and Avernum 2:CS.

3) What is the Shift-D code (or other specific method) to manually edit the current Day?

Re: 3), I'd like to recreate the town "decay" timetable as I did for the original Avernum 3 (see here). Also, as someone who likes to take his time exploring every square inch of a game and completing every quest without ever needing to consider time constraints, it would greatly increase my personal enjoyment of the game. Yeah, I know the changing world is the big unique thing with A3, but though I'm sure I'm in the minority in this, A3 is my favorite Spidweb game despite that mechanic, rather than because of it. Anyway - Slarty did a quick review of the script files to find all "day" conditional references (see here), but those only appear for 18 of the 26 towns that originally had time-related effects in E3/A3; still, as he notes, other effects (for those 18 towns or for others) may be hardcoded in the game and therefore not visible in the scripts. Also, thanks to Brood_Star, I've found where Jeff indicated there are no cheats to "alter the general timeline" in a Steam discussion (see here). However, that's not quite clear - he's talking there about resurrecting characters that had already died, but I'm more interested in reverting the current day to an earlier day to prevent future deaths/town changes. That all said, is there a way to manually edit certain game files to achieve this? I can't imagine it's impossible, but it would be really, really disappointing to me if it were - easy options to reset the current day were included in both E3 and the original A3.

Thanks, Slarty! I just loaded up character creation to mess around a bit, and had forgotten how expensive Luck was in A4 (at 4 skill points/level to start) compared to most other SW games - so that's yet another reason not to bother with Luck in favor of other useful skills that definitely aren't bugged. Appreciate the quick reply!

Excuse my necroing this truly ancient topic, considering it's pinned and my question is directly relevant - but could Slarty or someone else who had tested the effects of Luck in A4 confirm whether Luck is actually practically useless as implied in the current topic (posted by Slarty on 6 Jan 2006), or is in fact pretty amazing as described in this other topic (posted by Slarty on 25 Dec 2005)? The two topics directly contradict each other as to whether Luck actually increases character armor (+1/point), to-hit/dodge (+2%/point), F/C/E/mental resistance (+1%/point), and stun/poison/acid resistance (+3%/point). I'm planning another playthrough of A4 after many years, and remember it was almost the last SW game that was released with fairly glitchy/broken mechanics and UI systems (in my opinion), so I wouldn't be surprised to find Luck in fact does not grant the bonuses implied in the in-game skill description - I'd just like to confirm before I plan to pump 10 or so points into Luck for each toon.

(And of course, this was only 11 years ago, so I'm sure people will remember exactly what was going on... I'm an optimist.) Cheers!

I've been trying to determine the exact second strike chance % each point of QA gives in Geneforge 4, and can't find it anywhere on the forums. It does seem significantly nerfed compared to G3 (which I just finished) - in G3, with QA 10, I was getting a double strike at least half the time, but with the same QA 10 in G4, it seems more like 20-25%.

It's probably not a good sign nobody answered this question two years later, but just in case - can anyone confirm? I'd try to research this myself, but have no idea where I'd find this info in the game scripts.

This is the second time I'm necroing this thread, but again, it's for a good cause. I'm preparing another playthrough of G4 and again found this discussion about the possible discrepancy in Slarty's excellent guide (see link/discussion above), and from looking through all the game scripts, I've figured out why the reputation in the guide seemed to be off by 2 points: giving Fackler at least one research note in Chapter 2 gives -1 to reputation as listed in the scripts and Slarty's original forum post above (not +1 as listed in the guide), and the Chapter 1 ending total in the guide's "Powergaming" section should in fact be 104 (not 102, due to an apparent math error). The net effect of these two corrections would still leave you with the "powergaming" end-of-Chapter 2 reputation total of 120 in the guide. I just wanted to point this out for reference (whether or not Slarty is interested in correcting the two errors in the guide itself), since this is a stickied topic. Cheers!

Hopefully he'll put the correct information back in for all scarabs with v1.0.1, as he's already said he's correcting all tooltips.

Thanks for the clarification - I also realized after I posted that it might in fact be 1.5 turns/skill level, not 1.5 turns/character level, which as you say is still very strong, but not nearly as insane as it's implemented currently. With these changes, my 1.0.1 playthrough would've probably seen me as a Tinkermage, Khalida, and Nathalie - Khalida hits COTF, I hit Charge Weapons, Nathalie does what Nathalie does, and enemies have a very bad day. Thanks again to Jeff for dropping by the forums and considering the feedback, and for a solid ending to the Avadon trilogy!

Edit: Base duration will be average of 4.5 turns. Each level increases duration for 1.5 turns. For tinkermages using weapon-type attacks, one turn to get double effect for this period of time seems like a reasonable ability.

 

- Jeff Vogel

If I'm reading this correctly, that still seems pretty OP. As with version 1.0, given the long duration of the skill (at character level 1 you'd get an average of 6 turns of the skill, while at level 30 you'd get 48 turns - even more than my Silena has now from my above example), you could just activate Charge Weapons before a battle, then have every attack do double damage after entering the next battle - including on the first turn. Or am I missing something? Either way, thanks for taking the time to consider feedback!

On this topic, my Silena at Level 29 has modified attributes of Strength 11, Dexterity 44, Intelligence 12, and Endurance 12 - i.e. I raised almost exclusively Dexterity and almost never Intelligence at every level up - and her Charge Weapons skill (at max skill level 4) still lasts for 31 turns.

You'll have a chance to get it when you complete Khalida's side quest.

Kelandon - remember that you can simulate the in-game trainer character by pulling up Shift+D and typing "retrain." I've used that cheat myself for testing purposes, and it has exactly the same effects (and the same "attribute cycling" bug that's been reported earlier and described in detail by Slarty) as using the trainer character.

Personally, my problem with Shamans is their fragility - they're the only class that doesn't have a "damage resistance" skill set in their Efficiency tier. By end game, this makes them extremely fragile across the board (including to both physical and magic/elemental attacks) compared to every other class. I think your suggestion to tweak Nature Mastery to include damage protection would be welcome.

As far as their weak damage output, I haven't used Shamans much at all (mostly because of the above issue), so maybe others can add to that.

Jeff - right, my bad; I meant Steel Discipline and not Lightning Discipline. I did kind of like exploiting this bug, but thanks for your feedback and the fix!

So while we've got your attention, on an unrelated note (but still on the topic of game mechanics feedback) - did you have a particular reason for removing the to-hit chance percentage feedback from the in-game "text box"? Removing this info from in-game data frankly seems like a step backwards.

Yeah, I assume it was +5 in the beta, but he found it overpowered and nerfed it for the release version. Thanks again for putting together the useful info, as usual.

I promise I'm almost done, but the Shaman's Staff grants +3 to Aura of the Grove, not +5 as currently shown in the list. Thanks!

I'll include this here from another topic, as it's relevant to incorrect tooltip information: I've confirmed that the Shadowwalker's Lightning Discipline skill (if at level 7 or higher) gives a chance at Battle Frenzy upon receiving any type of damage (including magic, elemental, and ranged physical), not just "melee" damage as the tooltip incorrectly states.

OK, that makes more sense now. I might have to put Khalida and Silena in the party together again just to see how crazy the damage can get at high levels when Silena's buffed both with frenzy from Khalida and her own charged weapon attack. I imagine it's pretty cheesy.

Sure, your intent is clear from the OP. I don't think Blademasters are necessarily objectively "stronger" than Shadowwalkers, if that's what you're implying, but as far as the facts in the OP are concerned, I'm on board.

True, but my backstabbin' duo has served me just fine without the need for bringing a Blademaster along with her weaker resists - Blademasters never really appealed to me anyway. But to each their own.

Confirmed: Botan just got struck by magical damage from a Shock Turret in the northeast area of Beraza Woods, and received the Battle Frenzy status as a result. So it's either a bug, or a typo in the Steel Discipline tooltip, which as of game version 1.0 indicates Battle Frenzy only triggers on "melee" damage. My testing indicates it actually triggers upon receiving any damage. (There are many other issues with incorrect information in the tooltips, as noted in another topic, so I'm thinking it's just a typo - but if it is, maxed Steel Discipline as intended is even more OP than I initially thought.)

I agree with the OP analysis, but don't forget the power of the Shadowwalker's maxed Steel Discipline, which after skill level 7, gives 8%/skill level chance to enter Battle Frenzy when "struck in melee". I've confirmed that the frenzy actually triggers when struck by ranged physical attacks as well, and I'm pretty sure (though I could be wrong on this one point) I've seen it trigger often even from magic/elemental/curse cone/AOE attacks. I've been running a party of me (Shadowwalker), Botan (Shadowwalker), and Nathalie (Sorcerer) with the "Efficiency" skill rows maxed for all three, and have been destroying almost everything on Normal up until the Temple of Velusa so far. Granted, I am playing on Normal, but the OP-ness of the Shadowwalker's access to two attacks/actions per round via Battle Frenzy (which is active practically every round for at least one of my shadowwalkers using my builds) can't be discounted.

That said, I haven't used Silena much, but the fact that maxed Charge Weapons skill along with maxed Dexterity makes Tinkermages potentially even more OP seems pretty clear. And yes, Shamans... interesting, but more of a "challenge" class.

I completely agree - insufficient/incorrect info on game mechanics has always been my big pet peeve with Spidweb games, and I'd say it's a fairly major issue (especially for new players), so hopefully a thorough review of all the stat/ability tooltips will be made before version 1.0.1.

Aaand one more missing from the list - the Silken Shroud.

Stat that increases scarab ability

Blademaster - Dexterity

Shadowwalker - Dexterity

Shaman - Intelligence

Sorcerer - Intelligence

Tinkermage - Dexterity

This isn't accurate. As just one confirmed example, if you equip an Amethyst Scarab (Group Heal ability) on a Shadowwalker, the scarab's ability scales with Strength, not Dexterity.