[SPOILERISH] Questions for/from the second playthrough

[balabanshik]

I am on my second playthrough, and there is a number of questions that I wonder about:
1. As far as I can tell from discussions, there are three ways you can deal with a certain character. You can keep them as they are, you can deal with them to get Enkei, or you can switch, but quickly go back. The question is, what does that change? Any significant storyline changes, or are the two just variations on the style of providing the same information?
2. You can let the robot drive along known routes, but doesn't that reduce the number of encountered ruins? Basically, is that a trade-off between convenience and language research?
3. How many control words are there, and what do they do/mean? Are there multipurpose words that would work on, say, both robots and hoppers? In the first playthrough I got "malifar", "sliset", and a couple more, but never got around to testing them on anything.
4. Is there any translation for spoken Ancient, such as the Six-Myari interaction, or the stuff the Catkis gate says, or the stuff that the computers in the Vault speak? Or is that basically gibberish?

[worstcase11]

1. Some dialogs change

- If you skip the event pretty much nothing else happens. There will be some more talking about 'memories' in another location but Enkei will not be brought up. Six will discuss any of your finds as normally with you.

- You can get some information for a quick interchange, but you have to pick which questions you ask. There will be some minor references regarding Enkei in later dialogs as well. else everything goes same as in the no-event route.

- Chosing Enkei as a permanent companion will give you a few more insights on certain finds and minimally change a few events - it is nothing you can't puzzle out yourself but sometimes a confirmation of your ideas might be a good thing.
The big 'drawback' of Enkei is her personality, which some players did very much NOT enjoy to have to endure for the entire game. (I personally find Enkei very entertaining, but I also like Six, so the choice is a tough one.)

2. Yes that is the mayor drawback - if I am just sailing back and forth between Iox and Elboreth, I definately choose the autopilot, because there are no ruins. It can also be useful when one just found a ruin and has to loop a long way back to get at it on known rivers.
That said, when flying towards a digsite or on unknown rivers, the autopilot should be off, there is just too much missable stuff floating around the rivers.

3. Six will only react to two words but when talking with Myari, Aliya can ask him about a few others he and Aliya will at least comment on. Six and the Elboreth gate share no command words, the Gate has 4 words itself Catkis - a worker wants to enter, Kybenya - a Pilgrim wants to enter (allows you to get weapons and other pointy objects by the gate), Ifarali - activate the long distance hopper, and a last one that takes you near Heaven's Vault - you have to ask Huang first whether he knows another name for the Vault.

4. For some words you can go to Timor - he might tell you what a few of them mean (malifar, sliset or Kybenya) if your timing is right and you get the right dialog options.

[BaalTRB]

1) On my first playthrough I had high hopes of Enkei revealing much of the storyline, but alas there was very little difference from just having Six. I usually pick her because after the first half of the game spend with Six it's a welcome change... and if she gets too caustic I like to imagine what I'd snipe back at her with! Also I generally don't trust Myari, so swapping my robot's personality from one that does to one that doesn't trust Myari too is a bonus.

2) The way I see it, if you need a few more artifacts to see sites (cough library cough), or just want to find more sentences to translate, run around yourself and pick them up, but if your next moon is "yellow" or findable, then just save yourself the time and fast-travel!

3) I think worstcase11 covered 3 pretty well imo

4) I saw somewhere else on the steam discussions (alas I can't remember where) someone might have had at least a beginning of a translation from glyph to spoken ancient, but I could be mistaken. I imagine one might be able to write down a very detailed english-written Anicent dictionary, and using the few words of spoken Ancient we do know (Kibenya, the gate words, other names) one could attempt to build a transliteration of the Ancient glyphs. Then one could try to work out what the ship machines were chanting. My guess is that it will be pretty boring status readouts telling us that the ship has crashed or something, but given the detail to attention paid to the game I guess it will say something at least!

[Onesmy]

Hi!

worstcase11's and BaalTRB's answers were both quite comprehensive, however I have a few things to add regarding your last question.

4. It looks like you're able to roughly translate the spoken Ancient. For example, the Catkis hopper asks you something that could roughly translate as Speak of your travel purpose. You can then reply with ancient names you know :
Catkis = place of kings, or "citadel". This seems to indicate a diplomatic visit, which would explain why the gate refuses to let you through while you carry weapons.
Kibenya = the name of the goddess, seems to roughly translate as "the one who keeps life" from what I've gathered so far of spoken Ancient. The gate interprets this as a pilgrimage and doesn't check your belongings.

Now, as for the the way the translations work... Let's take a name you might have heard in your playthrough and definitely have seen written, Bo-cataliti which would roughly as heaven's. If you're curious about the reasonning for this last word, you can check the following spoiler. I recommend checking the script of this word at the same time.
So, let's start with "bo". You might have heard it when Timor translates "Elboreth" for you. It means "of". Notice how this is at the very start of the glyphs forming the word we are interested in.
Next is the sound "cat" that also appears in "catkis" and that means "place". The "point" is a joining character that groups two different idea. The "noun" character is not being pronunced in this word either as it is simply a written indication of the nature of the following word. Finally, "aliti" is the pronunciation of the characters "light" ("ti") and "high" ("ali") grouped together. Note that you can find "ali" in "Aliya" too.

The pronunciation of some characters in written Ancient can be estimated with what Myari, Huang, and all the Elborethians you encounter during your journey tell you. By inferring these pronunciations, you can get the gist of what the machines try telling you, in a similar way to what I've done with the words used at the Catkis gate.

I've also found a Wiki page that is full of spoilers regarding the language, with the beginning of a tentative translation of some of the words. You can find it here: Wiki page /!\ SPOILERS[heavensvault.gamerescape.com].