Difficulty - does it ever get harder?

[Beamup]

I've been playing through, for the first time, as a Shaper - normal difficulty. I'm not doing anything exotic in terms of character stats, just putting most of them into Intelligence and the three Shaping skills, with the odd point in Spellcraft and some points in Leadership and Mechanics (~6-8 each).

 

For creations, I started with a couple Fyoras, traded them in for some Artilas with Thahd backup, and I've upgraded to new creations as I got them. Currently I've got a Battle Alpha, two Cryoas, and a Terror Vlish.

 

I've fairly recently reached Kazg, my most recently completed quest was cleaning out the Refugee Cave. And it's frankly getting boring. Nothing since the Ruined School was the slightest challenge (and that wasn't bad), my creations just blow through everything in my path with no difficulty. They almost never even get hit because virtually everything dies before it gets a turn.

 

So is this ever going to get even slightly challenging, or should I just crank it up to Torment and have done with it?

[Walter]

Well the game is supposed to be challenging but doable on torment, so you can't really expect much difficulty two difficulty settings lower.

[Beamup]

Well, this is about what I'd expect from "very easy" or some such. It goes WAY beyond reasonableness to call it "normal" unless it gets a lot harder later on.

[Contra]

Several levels are allot harder, like Shaper Crypt. You will probably also run into troubles later when the level of creations skip a beat and you are still on the same level.

[Walter]

Then again, maybe the strategy of putting many points into intelligence and using the selection of creations you are is just a particularly effective strategy and most other ways to play are significantly harder.

[Zeviz]

I'd agree with Walter. The Shaper with all points sunk into Intelligence is as strong in Geneforge 1 as Guarding with max Parry is in Geneforge 2.

 

If you want more challenge, try playing an Agent in early game or a Guardian in late game.

[Walter]

Or again, if you want a challenge play on torment.

[Beamup]

Hokay, thanks for the advice. Torment, here I come...

[Archmagus Micael]

Quote:

Originally written by Beamup:
Hokay, thanks for the advice. Torment, here I come...

People say that Agent is hardest to play, but on Torment, it just beats Shaper and Guardian! With around 15 BM, my Agent can cast VERY powerful spells. I've just entered Kazg, with no Creations whatsoever.

- Archmagus Micael

[Beamup]

Quote:

Originally written by Archmagus Micael:

Quote:

Originally written by Beamup:
Hokay, thanks for the advice. Torment, here I come...

People say that Agent is hardest to play, but on Torment, it just beats Shaper and Guardian! With around 15 BM, my Agent can cast VERY powerful spells. I've just entered Kazg, with no Creations whatsoever.[/i]

Well, I'm back up to Pentil on Torment. It's not the least bit harder, as a matter of fact. AFAICT everything still has the same HP, which means that how powerful/accurate their attacks might be means absolutely nothing, since they never get to use them. Almost everything dies the turn it appears on-screen, before it can get an attack off.

In all honesty, the only way this could get any easier is if I were using the cheat codes or an editor script. So I find it very hard to believe that the Agent can possibly be any easier.

I'm really disappointed in Jeff this time. The Exiles were beautifully balanced, but it seems Geneforge just isn't.

[Archmagus Micael]

Try your shaper with only 1 creation to back you up. That may make life a tad interesting for you .

 

- Archmagus Micael

[Drakefyre]

The beginning of every Spidweb game is ridiculously easy.

[Beamup]

Quote:

Originally written by Drakefyre:
The beginning of every Spidweb game is ridiculously easy.

Correction. The beginning of most Spiderweb games are easy. The beginning of Geneforge is so trivially easy you really have to mess up very badly to get hurt at all. And I include creations in "you."

[Ik3]

To be honest, the ease of SS games is what kept me from going "forget this" and ditching them.

 

EDITTED: Sorry, profanity (I'm trying NOT to get banned)

[Slp006]

Hmmm. Maybe this calls for an editor that ups the difficulty level by modding enemy HP. Beamup, if you're familiar with script editing, you'll be able to do this by looking in the creature entries of gforscen.txt. However, if you're not, then I'll be tinkering with one myself. I'll edit the post when I get something done.

 

Be warned that I'm much more accustomed to making games ridiculously easy as opposed to moderately difficult, so this will be a new experience for me. Chances are the game will be too hard once I'm done with it. Maybe some other people will jump on this little bandwagon... I've got lots of room.

 

EDIT: Ok, here's a link to the Increased Difficulty Script . I tripled the HP of most enemies and gave their abilities more strength. Unfortunately, it also causes a glitch in some of the tile graphics. Evidently GF1 isn't as tolerant to tinkering as GF3 (and based on my experiences, messing with GF2's scenario file is even worse). However, the game should be much harder now. Let me know how it works out.

 

Be sure to back up the original gforscen.txt before replacing it with the modified version!

[Contra]

Quote:

Originally written by Ik3:
To be honest, the ease of SS games is what kept me from going "forget this" and ditching them.

EDITTED: Sorry, profanity (I'm trying NOT to get banned)

How was that profane? You need to chill down. Stasi went down with the fall of Western Germany and DDR.

[Archmagus Micael]

Or you could just try it without any creations.

 

- Archmagus Micael

[Ik3]

Quote:

Originally written by Contra:

Quote:

Originally written by Ik3:
To be honest, the ease of SS games is what kept me from going "forget this" and ditching them.

EDITTED: Sorry, profanity (I'm trying NOT to get banned)

How was that profane? You need to chill down. Stasi went down with the fall of Western Germany and DDR.

Oh, I cursed before I edited. Nevermind.

[Contra]

You won't get banned for curseing, and often not for curseing at someone either. Needs to be repeated attempts and ignoreing Code conduct.

[Drakefyre]

Ah, but cursing is against the Code of Conduct.

[Contra]

True, but it takes repeated violations to be banned. And you know as well as me that a curse here and there to underline oens feeling is not always something you get in trouble for, or even mentioned. Just look over the boards.

[Kelandon]

If he said what I think he said and then changed it to "forget this," the edit was probably a good idea.

[Contra]

I can't think of any non-racial word that is not allready scrambled by the forum that can be worth a warning.

[Sir David]

Maybe it was scrambled, thus insinuating profanity. Ik3 may have been afraid that the establishment wouldn't appreciate him triggering the auto-censor. Kel's right, changing the word to "forget" was probably a good idea.

 

Beamup, you may have stumbled upon the best way of playing, and everything may seem easy and boring now, but it will get harder. Contra mentioned the Shaper Crypt; I had a ton of trouble with that. It also depends on how you play the game - for instance, grovelling in submission to a servile leader will probably make the game quite a bit easier than manitaining your independence and killing the... well, I'll let you discover that on your own.