Messages

31

Suggestions / Re: Grant the player top initiative when starting a battle through a conversation

« on: January 09, 2016, 09:43:01 am »

I, for one, recall this happening with Blaine, where it is the player that initiates combat through conversation - but I didn't get top initiative. I'll watch out more carefully to see where exactly this occurs.

32

General / Re: DC Mutagens

« on: January 08, 2016, 09:48:39 pm »

Okay, basically, there is one particular mutagen compound that has a deadly effect on Tchort. In fact, a scientist has already discovered this long ago and has taken steps to ensure this mutagen compound cannot be used. Your job is to find another way to recreate this compound.

There is a mutagen scanner in the same building where you crafted the biocide grenades. Scan the mutagen reagents there, one by one, and write down their combinations. You will see entries like "G7" and "-CD". The former are the positive atoms, the latter are the negatives.

Hint 1:

The compounds that the scientist has tried to forbid are Exitus-1 and Exitus-2. You can find Exitus-1, but it is forbidden to place it into the combinator. So how else are you going to create it?

Hint 2:

By combining other reagents, of course! Ensure that you get the same sequence as in Exitus-1 by adding reagents into the combinator one after the other, using the negative atoms to remove excess positive atoms. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if you have to get the exact order right, or you've just got to have the same atoms as in Exitus-1. I'm also not sure how to tell whether your compound is working in the final battle or not. So yeah, it's still a bit of a mess.

33

Suggestions / Re: Gorsky's Core City Assignment [minor spoiler]

« on: January 08, 2016, 08:03:55 pm »

Probably since all NPCs that lead attack are expendable and can die in the fight.

Gorsky should not be expendable since he is one of the most important SGS NPCs and is one of your de-facto bosses.

Yet he does nothing after the fight, which is a shame. I was looking forward to working with the old bastard in trying to take over the city from the oligarchs, but I'd have settled for any positive development. Kinda disappointing that all he does is reestablish his old gang and hide out forever, but I guess there wasn't time to develop this quest chain properly.

34

General / Re: deep caverns help (spoiler)

« on: January 08, 2016, 05:28:42 pm »

You only need one drive shaft, and that one can only be found in one place. There is a labyrinth of worms and grubs south of Caerus Residential (where the statue of the mutagen inventor is). The correct shaft (HS-89) is in there.

35

Suggestions / Grant the player top initiative when starting a battle through a conversation

« on: January 07, 2016, 09:48:24 am »

A simple idea, as explained in the title. This is frankly just a quality of life improvement and doesn't actually make the player's job easier. For example, if I wanted to kill a non-hostile NPC who I could aggro through conversation ("I've come for your ugly head! *attack*"), then I could obviously do so through the conversation, but then I'd risk losing initiative. However, I could just as well initiate combat manually and attack without having a chat to begin with - I can think of only a single instance where I genuinely lose access to information by skipping the conversation, and even then it doesn't really matter. By manually initiating combat before even talking, I get top initiative anyways. So, might as well just ensure the player moves first when a fight starts because of a conversation option, so the immersion wouldn't have to be broken with this gamey little tactic.

36

General / Re: How to open the door to Burrower Caves

« on: January 07, 2016, 12:16:56 am »

I managed to get the keycard from him in the Zone Rat hideout with zero persuasion whatsoever, nor do I remember talking to Quinton or anyone else about the door with this particular character.

37

General / Re: Easy way to defeat end boss(mega spolier)

« on: January 06, 2016, 07:32:59 pm »

My crossbow user is just about able to kill the tentacles faster than they regenerate the damage... in theory. In practice, unless it's just a single tentacle, she'll get killed first. Crossbows aren't exactly great as a primary weapon. Not sure how exactly a crossbow jockey is supposed to win that fight, haha. Many stacks of poison, maybe? If it even affects the eye... I don't know...

38

Suggestions / Re: Let's have a chat about the Deep Caverns. (wall of text, and OBVIOUS SPOILERS)

« on: January 05, 2016, 11:48:19 pm »

I agree with every one of these suggestions except weakening the enemies. It's good that there are finally some enemies in the endgame that need new strategies to fight, it's just that everything else combines with it for a load of frustration. I don't get why Eye of Tchort was made 50 seconds, either: technically, it could just as well be reduced to 15 seconds, with 5 to 10 seconds passing between the debuff stacking depending on where you are. But really, the whole Eye of Tchort mechanic does not work as it should. Initially it seems like a very impressive feature, until it turns out that even 5 seconds of wandering around in the warehouses and residential blocks with it means an hour of frustration later trying to clear out those monsters (someone said they naturally despawn if you don't have the debuff - well, that was not my experience). So, basically, the player realizes that Eye of Tchort HAS to be avoided - and it can easily be avoided. A player who knows where to hide from the debuff can avoid fighting a single Tchortling in the outside areas, which kind of defeats the point of the entire mechanic. (Indeed, after that little disaster which caused a lot of Tchortlings to spawn, I never saw another Tchortling again before staring down the eye in the final area.)

I think it'd actually be a better mechanic if Creeping Dread/Eye of Tchort couldn't be lost by jumping into hatches and buildings (i.e. it ticks upwards even if in those areas), BUT the spawning of monsters was slowed down to such a slow rate that the player could plausibly kill the spawning monsters faster than they spawn. This would mean that a quick exploration trip to loot some containers and then zip back into a safe area still wouldn't have you meet any Tchortlings, but you couldn't, for example, explore the mutagen buildings or create the biomass-destruction grenades (or anything which requires a lengthy stay) without receiving the Eye of Tchort debuff and consequently being forced to deal with some spawns (at least in buildings). Once again, the spawn rate must be slowed down enormously so that this wouldn't just be even more frustrating - like 2-3 random Tchortlings at a time, but only when the debuff strikes and every few minutes after that, I feel that would be slow enough. (The doppelganger building should still be a safe house, though, because dealing with doppelgangers and Tchortlings at the same time would be impossible.)

39

General / Re: Easy way to defeat Tchort (mega spolier)

« on: January 04, 2016, 12:23:57 am »

Well... it's probably not intended, but there are a lot of times in the game where the strategy of standing at a chokepoint and letting a weak creature attack you while killing off the stronger ones behind it is a functional strategy. (Mutated Dogs with mutant packs, for example, or simple Rathounds at packs including Alphas and Ancients etc.) I also wouldn't call this method "easy" given that if I understand correctly, the tentacles are still able to fight you - and while your character may have dealt with them easily many other builds probably wouldn't see them as so trivial.

40

Bugs / Re: Gang Showndown Quest

« on: January 03, 2016, 06:23:04 pm »

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5dy8ke21ozjahgj/Dovienya.zip?dl=0

41

General / Re: New to the game, need help with stats

« on: January 03, 2016, 06:20:24 pm »

For starters, your stats are too balanced. Generally, you should dump stats that you don't really need to 3 and raise other stats - essentially, minmaxing. If you wanna use guns and psi together, then focus on Guns and some psi schools - personally, I would recommend Metathermics and Psychokinesis before Thought Control (I find these two schools stronger than Thought Control personally, but especially if you use psi as a secondary method of combat. Maybe focus on Guns and Metathermics - the latter has Pyrokinesis, which essentially functions as grenades, so you don't need to raise Throwing.

You shouldn't take Mercantile because money is not that hard to get. As a newbie, you don't need Persuasion that much either, but it can be helpful, so if you want to use it and have enough skills left over, feel free to pump it a little.

For stats, I'd dump Strength and Dexterity to 3 as a start. I'm not exactly sure what the best distribution of the other stats would be, but you'll want to max Perception, and balance the rest between Con, Will and Agi, with Intelligence at maybe 6 or 7 depending on what feats you want to take, but else as low as you can get away with. Low strength means light firearms are your best option, probably submachine guns or something.

As for the rest of the skills, well, I'm not sure you even need traps, Psi skills can make you very versatile and you don't want to spread yourself thin. With high Perception and the synergy from Lockpicking, you will be able to spot most traps (personal experience), even if you invest zero points in the skill, so that's fine. Focus on Mechanics and Tailoring from the crafting skills first, then probably Electronics - Chemistry and Biology will likely be secondary for you and you won't put many points into them, perhaps 10-20 as needed.

42

Bugs / Re: Gang Showndown Quest

« on: January 03, 2016, 10:59:16 am »

Same here. (Though I still hear the 'thump' sound of his corpse falling down, but now he isn't there at all.) My savegame is just before the battle, where I can talk to Silas to start the fight. Can we perhaps expect a fix to this or will existing savegames have to put up with the problem?

43

General / Re: Low-tech build viability (no crafting / hacking / lockpicking)

« on: January 02, 2016, 06:55:30 pm »

I'm actually doing such a playthrough too, among others - zero points in any of the crafting skills, though I did get the entrace-opening skills in exchange. It's a very simple sledgehammer build, with eight skills I put five points each into every time I level up: Melee, Dodge, Evasion, Stealth, Hacking, Lockpicking, Traps and Intimidation. Simple and straightforward - perhaps not perfectly optimized for power, but I'm playing her more for the flavor anyways. I've managed to get him through the (now nerfed) Depot A just fine, although some of the fights with many mutants took a couple reloads. I guess I could do alright without Hacking and Lockpicking too, I just don't want to miss everything. There's not that much in the containers that I really need anyway, aside from medicine and maybe a few other auxiliary objects every now and then.

44

Bugs / Re: Junkyard Black Eels quest fight

« on: January 01, 2016, 05:05:28 pm »

Any news on this? One of my characters is just before this fight and I'd rather not continue with her until this issue is fixed.

45

General / Re: I've had enough of the Deep Caverns (spoilery help-request)

« on: January 01, 2016, 10:32:09 am »

It is exactly in the doppelganger building. At least, that's where I found my one and only valve. Stealthing is the only way I found to get past them - basically, go back towards the exit, patiently waiting for the lone apparitions there to move far enough from the doorways not to detect you, then loop around from there and go for the suspension cells. I'm not sure how it's even possible to take them out otherwise - my guess would be psionics, but I dunno (I'm pretty sure there is some way though because there's an achievement for it).