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Geneforge 4: Infiltrator > Servile?


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23 hours ago, Damp Annals said:

Unless it changed in a version update at some point (I don't think so, but I am the wrong person to check with about that), in G5, the three original classes (Shaper, Guardian, and Agent) had significant, permanent, built-in armor and resistances that the six rebel-type classes did not have.

 

This was not intentional.  What happened was that in G4, Shapers, Guardians, and Agents existed only as NPCs, and so their base creature types were given all the regular sorts of damage resistances that NPCs with fighting ability tend to have.  (Because NPCs don't manually add skill points the way the player does, of course.)  Jeff just forgot to take these resistances back out when those creatures became available for use as the PC again.

 

Especially if you play as an agent/infiltrator with few to no creations, this can make a noticeable difference in how easy or hard the game is.

 

(Also, I can't remember if these baked-in resistances display on the status screen or not.)

Makes sense. So would it make more sense to play an infiltrator for extra spell energy or an agent for extra resistances?

Also, I was wondering, is mental magic any less effective in G5 than it was in G4?

Side note: I use the free version of Grammarly to point out punctuation errors I frequently make. It seems the alert snuck into my previous post, and now I can't edit the comment to remove it. Any suggestions?

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1) I just edited it out by hand.  Feel free to re-edit the post (you should be able to now) to replace whatever formatting, line breaks etc. you intended.  I had to edit the raw HTML so a bunch of stuff got lost.

 

Grammarly royally screwed up the HTML of the post, and it actually eliminated functionality from all buttons on the page that appeared below your post.  (If we were still on old UBB, I fully expect the whole site would have gone down over this :P)

 

I have no idea why it did that, but it was not good.  It would appear that there is a bug in the way Grammarly interfaces with this (at least) web form.  I would use caution if you continue to use it with web forms.

 

 

2) Spell energy rarely matters.  It just doesn't.  That should not inform your class choice at all.

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I don't disagree because I have no experience playing those. I also was not clear when I posed my question apparently.

What I meant was a "Fighter\mage" that is "ranged magic and then melee for when energy runs out".

 

I did some tests (I have an "arena mod" for such things) and ... frankly the only viable melee\magic hybrid is mental magic heavy, to cast daze and then beat the other side with your sword. But if you are magic-heavy and you are an infiltrator... you're better off toping the daze with battle magic than a weapon. I.e. Infiltrator diverting some skills to melee (which means also strength, quick action etc) is suboptimal to boosting battle magic and intelligence and hiding behind a few meat shield creations.

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Also, I strongly disagree about Infiltrator beating Servile for a melee-oriented build specifically in G4 (or G5, though Agent in G5 is another question due to the stupid inherent resists).

 

In G4, Servile melee/magic builds are neck-and-neck with Infiltrator magic builds.  It's a different emphasis.  The Servile is potentially much tankier (leading to the "turtle mage" appellation back when G4 first came out), to the point that he can eat multiple mine blasts and survive.  The Infiltrator is much more reliant on Mental Magic, but of course Mental Magic is superb.

 

Infiltrator melee/magic builds are definitely inferior to Infiltrator magic builds, for the reasons alhoon enumerated.  It follows then that they are also definitely inferior to Servile melee/magic builds.

 

In G5 you have another consideration, which is that you could run a mostly-solo Sorceress, with greater use of disposable meatshields in place of the Agent's stat pickups in Parry and better HP and so on.  The big problem here is, again, that the Agent gets those massive resistance boosts.

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In G4, Servile melee/magic builds are neck-and-neck with Infiltrator magic builds.  It's a different emphasis.

 

This question hasn't been explored for G5 due to the Agent getting the dumb resistances, which is certainly enough to make the difference.

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1 hour ago, Damp Annals said:

In G4, Servile melee/magic builds are neck-and-neck with Infiltrator magic builds.  It's a different emphasis.

 

This question hasn't been explored for G5 due to the Agent getting the dumb resistances, which is certainly enough to make the difference.

I've decided to pick the agent this time around. A little redundant considering I recently played an agent in G1 and G3 but the new spells will hopefully keep it interesting. I'm debating on investing a bit into melee weapons to deal with unbound. If I recall correctly, the unbound are fairly weak in melee in contrast to their fearsome breath attack. Also, which creation type should I put a point in to make creations when needed. I was thinking charged thahds because everyone on strategy central adores them. I think I remember taking out the unbound using multiple glaahks with relative ease, so that makes me consider magical creations. Let me know what you think.

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  • 1 month later...

The 10-cap is a thing after G1.  But in G1 it applies to literally everything.  It applies to fewer things in each succeeding game.  Damage feeding skills like Battle Magic or Strength shed it right after G1, while Shaping skills maintain it through G5 (I think?  or G4?  it's been a long time but I'm sure this is specified in a thread somewhere here).

 

Actually, it may not apply to Leadership in G1, since that isn't ever fed into a formula and is only read directly.  So not quite literally everything, but just about everything.

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  • 2 months later...
On 9/5/2019 at 5:45 AM, Futura Kobold said:

The 10-cap is a thing after G1.  But in G1 it applies to literally everything.  It applies to fewer things in each succeeding game.  Damage feeding skills like Battle Magic or Strength shed it right after G1, while Shaping skills maintain it through G5 (I think?  or G4?  it's been a long time but I'm sure this is specified in a thread somewhere here).

 

Actually, it may not apply to Leadership in G1, since that isn't ever fed into a formula and is only read directly.  So not quite literally everything, but just about everything.

Would this be considered optimal stat allocation for an G5 agent (assuming best artifacts)? 20 battle magic, 6 Blessing magic, 30 mental magic, 30 sc, and 4 healing craft, (including artifact bonuses)?

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