To ZarahNeander:
I give Z'ant the Choas Moliri when he sends me to the mooks, and get that reply.
But the next mission is to bring the coordinates of savants ship, and i have to enter them in dialog.
Or do you give him the orb twice, and he accepts it?

To Silpion:
Thats normal. But sometimes (for me, in game number 15 and 17 or the like), z'ant finds it out. I'm quite sure i didn't anything different than in the other games; it seems to be a rare random effect.

What item do you use when you bring him the coordinates of savants ship? Thats the point where z'ant caught me. </font>[/QUOTE]Either of the black boxes. If you use the damaged one, he'll say something about it being burned to a crisp. I don't recall what he says when you use the good one. Either way, you're now in conversation mode so you can give him the coordinates. Using this method, I've never gotten caught by Z'Ant. If I don't use this method, I always get caught after the Mook-house job.

Thanks for the hint. I thought i need to completely avoid normal conversation to be safe.

Reading this post again, I think maybe Chaos was hinting at running past the T'rang in the restricted area (with an Overmind, Assassin and some Watchers) to get to the transporter without offending them. I have tried this a few times, and timing is the word. They chase you and you will be lucky to get to a non-combat area or not be killed. The next room has to have an open door or you have to shut a door behind you (not sure if you can do that in combat, pretty sure you can't). If that second door is randomly open for a pesky little T'rang, you may beat this roadblock to the transporter without angering the T'rang. Is this what CT meant?

Pretty much. Except that you don't have to "red-ify" the T'Rang guarding the area at all. If you go right up to (but not into) the doorway, initiate combat mode, and select the "Run" action, you can run all the way through the room in one round. The T'Rang guard-detail leader will give you the "This area is resstricted" warning; just hold Shift+Down Arrow to run backwards out the door. Once you're through the room they're in, you're home; apparently they don't care that you're now in the other hallway, and that you had to go through their "restricted" area to get there. The doorway into the Monitor room isn't locked; to get through the next doorway to the teleporter, just wait for the Monitor to spit out a Younger and follow it through.

You can use the same technique to get the Book of Crushing and Gleaming Sword in the back corner of the "restricted area" room: initiate combat (in Phased mode), select run, start the round, and move forward until you can grab the items; turn around and use the remaining movement to run back out. That's also how I stole their Mindblast Rod "secret weapon": play Pied Piper to a group of Deathsting Apuses, and the two T'Rang guarding the door to the other "restricted area" will high-tail it down the road; use fake combat/run to dash in and get the Mindblast Rod. Same for getting Diamond Eyes from the Mountain Wilderness barrow, etc., etc.

Thanks, CT. I think I will try it next round. BTW, you can get the other items in the "restricted area" just by sneaking around them, hugging the walls, without any special trick. Initiating combat and backing away sounds like a plan. Not sure about the "shift-down", I reconfigured the movements, and I'm not sure if you need phased combat mode to get by them but I suspect you do.

You need Phased any time you need to "run slowly" in combat; in Continuous, the movement bar counts down whether you're moving or not, and in these situations you need to "use up" the movement allotment in a controlled manner. In Continuous you'd end up running out of movement while still in the room, and things would get exciting.

Got it.

I always used phased combat in this game and forgot it was called that. I still think of it as turn-based combat. I think in M&M 9 I had to use continuous combat to get by a rough spot, or maybe it was W&W. I haven't used the "initiate combat and choose run" option. I may want to use it sometimes when I want to run first before I am penned in. Or, in this particular situation. Except for getting RFS and getting the combat skill (and to avoid p'ing off the T'Rang), I don't see a big reason for going to the mines.

[ 06-26-2003, 06:16 PM: Message edited by: Ziggurat ]

Yeah, I suspect I won't be seeing much of the Mine Tunnels any more either. I've gotten away from using RPCs the majority of the time, and you can build a better Monk than RFS. Without some other "have to have", or even "really nice to have" in that area, why bother?