Reilly's Combat Armor, altho i also like the Prototype Medical Armor in Old Olney. High armor stat, early warning, and Med-X dispenser. IT TALKS for cryin out loud!

It's most likely they simply glitched out (i've known Seagrave to disappear and Walter in Megaton). Also, Garcia has a habit of spawning at the nearby Super Mutant camp. He's sleeping on the cot in the back for some reason. Strange stuff.

Nope. :/

It stacks retroactively.

Ghoul mask plus one level of Animal Friendship = happy trails underground. I know every manual and guidemaker says ditch Animal Friendship and CHA but i like it just fine. I still get great stats even w/ a 6 CHA. I wouldn't bother w/ 2 levels of AF tho.

I'd say kid to pre-teen level. Nothing super-difficult about it. Enjoyable story for me but most of the familiars are goofy IMHO but that's okay. Big in scale tho and lots to do. A harder Final Fantasy Origins meet's Pokemon. I describe it having a very "Neverending Story" feel to it.

I can't really help you as far as best mages and such, but i can help you narrow the field and let you pick the best from the list i've compiled. I've been looking over the familiars. There are just so many so i decided to narrow the parameters. I generally excluded anything w/ a built-in elemental weakness (i know they can be somewhat compensated for, but not entirely). Since i'm looking at end-game familars mostly, i excluded any familiar w/ Psyche Up as a power. Those two exclusions alone will narrow things down alot. Some are still worth considering if their stats have one obvious advantage, like the Burly has a ATT in the upper 300's. Another example, the Tu-Whit has Psyche-Up but it has mulitple resists against spells. I haven't come up w/ a go-to list since i'm only about halfway thru the game.

I haven't looked over any of the excluded ones to see if they have any spells/tricks that i can't get from another familiar. I also didn't take into account any vulnerabilities (Confusion, etc).

From a general end-game standpoint (Solosseum and such excluded since those will require some obvious lineup tweaks to defeat the waves), 22 or so different familiars w/ no elemenal weaknesses. Of those 22, 13 have a resist. The Hooray (Grimray only), Sparkee (good stats all around, elemental spells, and 2 resists), the Dinkey (Master Key only), Spittoo (Lickety Spittoo only), both Monoliths, Sprog Cog (Supercogductor only), both Airheads, Naja (Najapatra only), both Hullaballoons, both Auroralynx, both Relixx, both Eggrolls, and both Sapdragons. Of the 13, only 2 have high ATT tho. Don't discount the other 9 familiars just because they don't have resists. Some of them are pretty good, like the Tundragorer. 4 stats in the 300s and no vulnerabilities. Pretty sure i got all this right but others can recheck of course. Hope this helps, Good luck.

The ads that make the screen jump around do get a little annoying. I've found myself having to wait about 5-10 seconds extra every time i change a screen so all the junk can sort itself out. That was just something i accepted. The thing that got me riled today was that stupid green ad that came on as soon as i came to the site today. Some kind of "in your face" feeble attempt to get me to click on a moving target or something. The kind of ad you'd normally see on low-budget "anyone can advertise here" sites. Trashy.

How about instead of me changing out my browser and making adjustments just to read the forums..Gamespot just wake up it's support guys and figure out what the problem is, then dock em pay for apparently messing up some mini-update. I shouldn't have to do things the hard way just to bounce around a website.

I listed 'Culdcept SAGA' awhile back in this thread....and still have yet to see anyone else list it (unless i missed one). Am i THAT alone? *cricket chirps*