Have to admit I don't like how skills and many items lack descriptions. I mean how am I to know what for example yammer does ( both in combat and out of combat) without any description?

Despite that annoyance the game still feels solid

the best way to know what yammer does - just, you know, try it

Oh I did try it out in combat and i'm still not sure what it does. Also have yet to find a use for it out of combat

IIRC Yammer is like a stun in battles and persuasion in the world (i.e., yammer people to get info out of them).

Ok thanks and what about the status effects? The manual doesn't list them and their is no tooltip in game. My guys got a purple skull on him and started spinning around, I figured he was confused but they still landed all shots on their targets so i figure it's something else

A lot of stuff is not very well explained in the game; I had troubles getting shields etc. to work properly.

Outside of battle, Yammer is really annoying to use since the game doesn't give you clear clues when to use it, and it only works on a really small percentage of the conversations,

Luckily, most of those are vital for the game progression and they usually drop *some* clue about Grumpos being able to help out, so you won't accidentally skip cool stuff by not endlessly trying it on everybody.

Basically hover with your life cursor over an talkable NPC and press ctrl, if the arrow keeps rotating (indicating an action can be performed), you can yammer that person. Click to start a mini-game and watch what happens. I've used it 3-5 times this far I think. :)

Hey Trucane,

Here's what I have figured out about some of those items which may be confusing you.

NUTS: This is effectively 'confusion' - when affected by it the target will attack a random target or attack nothing. It's symbolized by a bunch of yellow interlocking squares moving around and into each other.

WINKY: I believe this slows down the effected creatures action bar in a non constant way. It's symbolized by the effected creature spinning around in place. (Think of it like slow).

PSY-(anything): The affected creature will attack allies, moving around to attack them as well if they are melee. They will ignore enemies during the time they are affected. Some shimmering beams (3 of them I think) will appear over the effected creatures head.

SLOW: Pretty obvious this one - causes the effected creatures action bar to refill in a constant way. I can't recall the visual effect of being slowed.

From what I can gather WINKY/SLOW are basically the samish thing - but slow works better at it. It gives creatures (and you) two different ways to slow down the enemies attack rate.

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Stats mean the following things:
Might: affects beefiness and beat.
Agility: affects speed, beat block, and beat.
Wisdom: effects beat block (and... something else later I think).

Beefiness: effects how much damage you deal.
Beat: effects how often you'll hit.
Speed: how fast your action bar fills.
Beat Block: How likely you are to dodge an attack.

Yammer, Tractorhold(Democratus), and PAX Stun(Boots) don't do crap and therefore worthless. Don't bother with it in battle. they stun enemies for like 15 seconds.

You should go with Mystech instead.

Another thing I'm sorry for is that Fatimascreen doesn't work for other characters, only Boots. It's too bad, because Grumpos can heal everybody with the Healfield, so I don't get why Boots cannot protect others with FatimaScreen. Items have descriptions down in the status bar when you hover the mouse over them. For example you hover over bracelets like Antiwinky Annulet and in the statusbar down, it says it protects from Winky in battle.

I agree with you on the fatima screen, it's completely worthless this way. I'm in the hive atm and staff sweep and plasma wall one-hit everything except the boss. In contrast, fatima screen does absolutely nothing. I used it against the first thug battle and never looked at it again.

Fatimascreen is very useful in tougher battles on hard mode. When you activate it on boots, a little lifecursor icon displays near Boots' icon. While this is on, Boots is protected about 50% Damage. Fatimascreen is always my first move for boots.

Skull on your Chars picture usualy means bad status effect and shield means protection. What it exactly does is "colour coded" like the mythtech so if you have a cyan shield it means ur protected from cyan effects (freeze), a red skull means you are burning etc. Obsidian is for psy and white for bane, although i havent noticed any bane effect yet, apart from the ability to deal damage and heal.
That blue uparrow seems to represent other effects, like seeing enemies health with the true vision torque etc.