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dead comedy forums posted:Gotta say that Sunless Skies is drat gorgeous and Failbetter seems to have learned a lot from Sea (there are gameplay modifiers that you can select on startup to make your life easier, I decided to get only aiming aid), so you guys should pick it up if you liked the first game Well, one of your backgrounds of choice can be zailor! Yeah, it's really vastly improved and I'm just loving it. Looks like everyone else agrees too since this thing is pushing 90 on Metacritic which is unheard of.
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Feb 6, 2019 10:27
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Crack theory on the Tide: It wasn't the precursor to Grail, it was precursor to Heart. Hours have no trouble representing multiple aspects, even particularly exemplary ones (the Colonel and the Sun-In-Rags can both be called on for Lantern, for example) and the Red Grail would later go on to create the Thunderskin. Add as well the duality of the Witch-and-Sister (Grail) and Sister-and-Witch (Heart) and it's fair to see these aspects may once have been much more closely aligned. Tide has an obvious connection to unceasing rhythm, after all. By a similar way, I suspect the Watchman got his aspect from the Sun-In-Splendour rather than the Egg Unhatching, so its aspect could be anything. I'd guess Winter - an egg that doesn't hatch is silent and dead, or never lived in the first place. Tenebrais fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Feb 6, 2019 |
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Feb 6, 2019 15:18
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Have we thought about, from the anthropic perspective, the Wheel being a pottery wheel, or from the non-anthropic perspective, the Wheel being a wheel-of-life principle (i.e. everything being in its place in an unchanging cycle)?Tenebrais posted:Crack theory on the Tide: It wasn't the precursor to Grail, it was precursor to Heart. Hours have no trouble representing multiple aspects, even particularly exemplary ones (the Colonel and the Sun-In-Rags can both be called on for Lantern, for example) and the Red Grail would later go on to create the Thunderskin. Add as well the duality of the Witch-and-Sister (Grail) and Sister-and-Witch (Heart) and it's fair to see these aspects may once have been much more closely aligned. Tide has an obvious connection to unceasing rhythm, after all. It would make sense that Heart and Grail were the same at one point. You can't have aristocratic Victorian ideas about excess and hedonism in a hunter-gatherer society where need and desire would be much more closely aligned.
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Feb 6, 2019 17:27
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Microcline posted:It would make sense that Heart and Grail were the same at one point. You can't have aristocratic Victorian ideas about excess and hedonism in a hunter-gatherer society where need and desire would be much more closely aligned. Perhaps their separation reflected the formation of class systems. Some live to consume, and pursue desire; others must work for their daily bread, ever producing, never changing, never ceasing, never ceasing, never ceasing
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Feb 6, 2019 17:47
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moth and wheel, jung: IMO moths are drawn to light (lanterns) as wheels are drawn to horizons, making the difference of moth/wheel the difference between exploration of the vast outside with the interior realm. Alexis Kennedy borrows a lot of iconography from victorian and 1900's occultism, but the specific lens through which he tends to view these things is fairly Jungian. Mansus is, after all, something like a wild and unfettered universal unconsciousness, even if it's not particularly anthropocentric in its presentation.
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Feb 6, 2019 17:59
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Sekenr posted:IMO it is wrong to explain gods from stone from anthropocentric point of view. They are forces of nature that manifested themselves into Mansus and are under no obligation to be defined by humanity this or humanity that. My understanding is that they hanged out there before humans even existed. perhaps the sun in splendor represented a undivided aspect of glory/light which is divided into lantern and winter after the intercalate. now part of the aspect of light itself is nowhere, creating a division of light and not-light and necessitating an aspect that represents the absence of light and warmth and life. "lantern" isn't really what you would expect to represent the sun in splendor, a lantern casts light but limited in scope and temporary. one cannot walk behind the sun. edit: not necessarily that the intercalate "created" winter but that the hours that inherited from an entity that is now nowhere necessarily have some part of that in them Ayn Randi fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Feb 7, 2019 |
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Feb 7, 2019 00:29
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Speedball posted:Well, one of your backgrounds of choice can be zailor! Yeah, it's really vastly improved and I'm just loving it. Looks like everyone else agrees too since this thing is pushing 90 on Metacritic which is unheard of. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong but I've gone through three captains because any time I find or inspect anything some ship covered in tentacles with a ton of HP appears and blows me up in a couple shots.
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Feb 7, 2019 01:54
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Alright thread, if you could be a Name for any Hour, which would you choose? I think I would eschew the Greater Hours and go with The Beach-Crow. He seems to mostly just go where he pleases, steal poo poo, and apparently watch other Hours gently caress, or meet up and hold hands or whatever hours do. Obviously Thunderskin would be fun too. Though the Heart victory Kind of makes it seem like you just become some dancing animal?
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Feb 7, 2019 02:57
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Aerox posted:I don't know if I'm doing something wrong but I've gone through three captains because any time I find or inspect anything some ship covered in tentacles with a ton of HP appears and blows me up in a couple shots. I feel like the newest patch they did made tentacle ships happen more frequently in response to checking things, because I NEVER saw one like that until afterward. I know the patch had nothing to do with anything but controller tweaks, but it's how it's worked out for me.
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Feb 7, 2019 03:17
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I picked this up on a whim and diving in to the mechanics is fantastic. I stumbled upon the White Door after many, many outright failures and it actually spooked me at what opened up. It really does have this feeling of chasing forbidden knowledge. You have a hint of where to go but not how to get there.
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Feb 7, 2019 09:04
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quote:Q. WHAT IS THAT BLUE THING THAT HAS JUST APPEARED ON MY BOARD Slowly breaking down the UX hell.
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Feb 7, 2019 09:33
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Yorkshire Pudding posted:Alright thread, if you could be a Name for any Hour, which would you choose?
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Feb 7, 2019 11:17
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Yorkshire Pudding posted:Alright thread, if you could be a Name for any Hour, which would you choose? Crowned Growth. 
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Feb 7, 2019 11:21
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I'd bring THA SECOND DAWN
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Feb 7, 2019 14:29
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Tenebrais posted:... CrowdControl fucked around with this message at 16:20 on Feb 7, 2019 |
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Feb 7, 2019 14:54
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CrowdControl posted:The Watchman is the three-in-one trinity that came from the egg retreating to the glory above the mansus for survival, a mortal ascending to the glory through the door in the eye and part of the sun in splendor doing the same (just because, as far as I can tell from the lore) and acting as a catalyst for the three of them to return as the singular merciless Watchman. It seems likely all his pieces were lantern associated because they all made it to the glory. This also makes the Watchman the only hour that is a god from flesh, blood and stone and you'll see it referred to as multiple across the lore. Spoilers below for lore about the Watchman and Egg Unhatching. The World Does Not Weep: The unknown adept who wrote this proclaims: the world forgets, but the Ivory Dove does not. The text contains a number of prescriptions for ensuring that certain acts are remembered, including a rite which requires a sacrifice in a particulary monstrous mode... The Hours tried to bury the memory of what happened to the Wheel, the Flint, the Tide, and the Seven-Coiled, but the Dove won't permit it. Nor will he permit what happened to the First Egg to be forgotten, although it is perhaps the one thing that the Watchman might ever forgive... A Second Glory: Juceh engages in an apologia for the destruction of the Hours: they were old, they were cowardly, they were vile, their time had passed, and it was the shining destiny of humankind to seize the House through glorious battle. Juceh recounts how the Hour called Seven-Coils was slain in battle by the Colonel, how the Grail devoured the Hour called Tide, and how the Egg Unhatching 'fled like a coward'. He's quite vituperative about the Egg Unhatching. He warns darkly against its return. The Focus of Amber: Omar claims that the Hour called Watchman is both a god-who-was-flesh - an Hour who was mortal - and also a god-from-Light - an Hour who descended from the Glory - but adds, finally, that the Watchman's origin is triple, and that 'in essence, he is Amber.' The Watchman, according to Omar, was once another Hour entirely, who ascended into the Glory to escape efforts by other Hours to send him to Nowhere. It may be that Omar's sense of persecution creeps into the narrative at this point: certainly it grows less coherent, and the last part is devoted to attempts to prove that eyes, eggs and the Sun are all in some sense conjunct. The Manner in which the Alchemist was Spared: In the days of the Carapace Cross, when humanity lived in the dark and ate on its knees, humans could enter the Mansus like vermin. One learnt the arts of Flint, the arts of shaping and remaking... 'Through the Black, the Yellow, the Red, the Unwise Mortal ascended to the shadow of the Egg Unhatching, and remained in his service. He may be there to this day.'
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Feb 7, 2019 15:27
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Goddamn it, I was actually getting pretty far this time. As a dancer I got to Change: Stigma before my notoriety caught up with me. I tried to destroy the evidence but a 5 moth hireling didn't get the job done. Opening the Spider Door was a mistake.
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Feb 9, 2019 06:10
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Intoluene posted:Goddamn it, I was actually getting pretty far this time. I've done three playthroughs in a row without dying. (Including one advanced victory) I handle this by treating the various game over systems (Evidence, Dread, Fascination) as cancer stage levels plus 1 Have one of these things: (Stage 2 cancer): I better deal with this right now, but I can still do other things. Have two of these things: (Stage 3 Cancer): I need to focus all of my attention on this problem and ignore literally everything else. I have three of these things: (Stage 4 Cancer):  Basically, if you have a single one of these I'd spend a good amount of effort towards the problem, EVERY time. I mean c'mon, stiff upper lip and all that.
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Feb 9, 2019 08:35
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Goddamn grinding high-tier Secret Histories is easily the worst part of this game.
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Feb 9, 2019 10:58
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so many mirrors shattered...
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Feb 9, 2019 12:31
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Though speaking of Apostle playthroughs, there are very few things more satisfying than nuking a Dartsman with King Crucible.
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Feb 9, 2019 13:29
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Yorkshire Pudding posted:Matching your cult to the specific desire you're going for makes it just a little bit easier, but not a huge amount. Besides the fact that some of the cultist abilities (looking at you, Heart) are just way better than others. Yeah no kidding. Has anyone ever found a use for the Heart cultist ability? It's garbage.
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Feb 9, 2019 14:29
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Are there any good ways to generate dread to stave off fascination?
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Feb 9, 2019 14:41
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ZeroCount posted:Yeah no kidding. Has anyone ever found a use for the Heart cultist ability? It's garbage. What? Heart is great - it eats Notoriety and has no downside. team overhead smash posted:Are there any good ways to generate dread to stave off fascination? Revealed card in the White Door. You have a 2 in 3 chance of something that decays into Dread.
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Feb 9, 2019 15:00
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Just got my first apostle victory, with Forge. Not sure I am any the wiser as to what actually happened: so I ascended to be an Hour by having a follower activate the Dawnbreaker device at the Flaw in the World and it...stopped the sun? Temporarily? And the poor schlub who did all the work gets dissolved and banished to Nowhere ? Also, Worms are dicks and keep eating my cultists. I think I failed nearly every curse check in that run.
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Feb 9, 2019 15:00
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heart cultists are redundant with painting and commissions, but if you have no mystique and a notoriety you need to burn theyre a method you can use
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Feb 9, 2019 15:02
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vetinari100 posted:What? Heart is great - it eats Notoriety and has no downside. Except they also sometimes just eat Mystique instead so they're actually only useful if you've got Notoriety and nothing else. Secondly, the talk verb is often in high demand so there is almost always something better you can be spending it's runtime on (like anything else). Thirdly, Hunters are little babbies after the earlygame so who cares about Notoriety. EDIT: Question about Apostle endgame: Is it just me or once you kill the Long that harasses you all game, the Apostle endgame is really dull? It's just piecing things together for this ridiculous elaborate mechanism and waiting for Guidance drops. I know the regular ascension endgames have that issue too but it feels more pronounced in this because it can take so long to finish winning the game. I still haven't found a Carcass Spark by this point but there doesn't seem to be anything that's going to stop me except pure tedium. ZeroCount fucked around with this message at 15:20 on Feb 9, 2019 |
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Feb 9, 2019 15:10
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ZeroCount posted:Except they also sometimes just eat Mystique instead so they're actually only useful if you've got Notoriety and nothing else. Secondly, the talk verb is often in high demand so there is almost always something better you can be spending it's runtime on (like anything else). Thirdly, Hunters are little babbies after the earlygame so who cares about Notoriety. The main use I’ve found them is when I know I’m finishing up an expedition. I can start them talking about cult business when I finish the last challenge, and they’ll happily eat the notoriety that pops up with expedition close.* *does not apply if you paint for a living or generate mystique, and will sometimes randomly fail
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Feb 9, 2019 16:14
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As someone who literally never paints, except to get the high end item paintings, Heart cultists loving rule. Since I never have any mystique on the board, especially when it comes to expeditions, I can basically get notoriety off instantly the second it hits the board with good timing. I think they're the best because all the other things cultists can do (Murder investigators, dispose of evidence) can be done easier with summons.
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Feb 10, 2019 01:41
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Yorkshire Pudding posted:As someone who literally never paints, except to get the high end item paintings, Heart cultists loving rule. Since I never have any mystique on the board, especially when it comes to expeditions, I can basically get notoriety off instantly the second it hits the board with good timing. I think they're the best because all the other things cultists can do (Murder investigators, dispose of evidence) can be done easier with summons. Summons can't kidnap, which can be pretty useful. Anything a summon can do, though, it's almost certainly better to have a summon do.
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Feb 10, 2019 01:58
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Yorkshire Pudding posted:As someone who literally never paints, except to get the high end item paintings, Heart cultists loving rule. Since I never have any mystique on the board, especially when it comes to expeditions, I can basically get notoriety off instantly the second it hits the board with good timing. I think they're the best because all the other things cultists can do (Murder investigators, dispose of evidence) can be done easier with summons. the best thing cultists can do is kidnap EDIT: My main problem with the Heart cultist action is how little impact it has. Getting rid of one Notoriety is....what? Just foul up the evidence or get rid of the Hunter. If I had to rank the cultist types by their cult actions, it'd be something like this: Good: Edge, Grail (kidnapping is both something you can't do anywhere else and running through a large number of prisoners very quickly can be vital to certain spoilery things. I find myself just using Talk as a constant kidnap spam button a lot in the lategame.) Alright: Forge, Knock, Moth (There's nothing *wrong* with just making money. It's just that usually there's better things to be done with Talk since it's such an in-demand and important Verb). Bad: Heart (Notoriety removal is low impact, does literally nothing if you have Mystique) Winter (Corpses are so much less useful than kidnappings it isn't funny. The rites that need corpses are lacklustre and better summons are pretty easy to find) and Lantern (random influence lottery, never goes high enough for the influences I really need, once made me lose the game because I didn't know it could give Fascination) I don't have much issue with Winter and Lantern having bad cultist functions since they're both very powerful and important Lores in other parts of the game but Heart gets the short end of the stick so many times elsewhere too. I played a Heart Change victory all the way to end and I spent most of it just sitting and staring at my Heart 10 or Heart 12 super-cultists and wishing they were useful for anything at all. One of my Tarantellists rebelled and became a rival because of love triangle shenanigans and in any other cult, a loss of an Exalted member should have been a huge blow. Here it was just 'oh no, I lost one of my very occasional curse-sponges.' ZeroCount fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Feb 10, 2019 |
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Feb 10, 2019 02:40
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I can understand why they didn't go this way, since it would've really changed the dynamics of play and balance, but I really felt like one of the advantages a bigger cult gets you would be 'spare' copies of verbs (Talk & Explore, mainly - although it would make a lot of sense to make cultists Work and bring in some extra $$$). Things like Heart would be sooo much better if they didn't occupy probably the most in-demand verb in the late game. Or, heck, I'm not sure it was even the most in-demand; it was just the most loving crucial for dealing with game-ending threats. I had to keep a Snare up for my rival basically all the time or risk him sniping my Expeditions, have summons/cultists clearing Evidence off the board, and in a pinch I'm pretty sure tying up a detective or a rival in a perfectly-timed tea date was the only thing that kept me in the running. (Oh! Generating Dread from chatting about Winter Lore, too, although that turned out to be too much of a gamble for my liking)
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Feb 10, 2019 19:15
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team overhead smash posted:Are there any good ways to generate dread to stave off fascination? Have an Affliction decay, and then Work the result.
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Feb 10, 2019 20:52
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Yorkshire Pudding posted:As someone who literally never paints, except to get the high end item paintings, Heart cultists loving rule. Since I never have any mystique on the board, especially when it comes to expeditions, I can basically get notoriety off instantly the second it hits the board with good timing. I think they're the best because all the other things cultists can do (Murder investigators, dispose of evidence) can be done easier with summons. Hunters seem to turn one out of four or one out of five pieces of Notoriety into evidence in a game. The rest time out. Picking my cult to add so much busywork, 3/4ths to 4/5ths of which is wasted effort, does not strike me as super valuable. ADDING: My first game I was super cautious and destroyed every piece of tentative evidence, every piece of dread, every piece of fascination. By now I've realized that it's not worth the effort to think about removing those unless the evidence is damning or the timer is about to start. team overhead smash posted:Are there any good ways to generate dread to stave off fascination? Did you ever figure out the Way to the Wood? Repeat exactly what you did on your first trip there to, guaranteed, generate a moth influence. That will decay into dread in 120 seconds (so 180 seconds from when you started dreaming). It takes 240 seconds from when the fascination timer appears to when it kills you, so you have time even if you suddenly end up with 5 fascination right as the timer first appears. (If it's already on the board and you suddenly generate 2+ fascination you're not paying enough attention to the next season.) TheBlandName fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Feb 10, 2019 |
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Feb 10, 2019 21:17
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TheBlandName posted:Did you ever figure out the Way to the Wood? Repeat exactly what you did on your first trip there to, guaranteed, generate a moth influence. That will decay into dread in 120 seconds (so 180 seconds from when you started dreaming). It takes 240 seconds from when the fascination timer appears to when it kills you, so you have time even if you suddenly end up with 5 fascination right as the timer first appears. (If it's already on the board and you suddenly generate 2+ fascination you're not paying enough attention to the next season.) A little bit at the end there is actually something really important that isn't really mentioned or obvious in game. And that is that looking at your "Time Passes" verb shows you what the upcoming event will be, allowing you to plan ahead. I actually tend to forget about it completely if I don't play for a while. So you can see that you have visions coming up and start your process to generate some dread quite a bit before the card event pops up.
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Feb 11, 2019 02:56
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DO NOT forget that if you are holding something with your mouse, it will NOT be sucked up into a needy card slot. For example, if I have 2 Notoriety and 3 Mystique and the Detective starts snooping around, I could do the following: - Use max level painting to take up four of the cards, this takes about 50 seconds to finish, so I would wait until less than a second before the Detective shifts into their searching for clues mode. - I click and hold the last card and continue doing so until the 30 second timer expires. I can pause the timer, set the card down, do stuff then reclick+hold the card before starting the timer again without risk. If I ever go off pause while not click+holding that last card, I'm going to have it get sucked up. Doing this with the various game over mechanic cards can really delay you getting killed. I've even held onto the Tentative Evidence card and had the detective spawn a copy of it. This trick is also useful to force a Needy card slot to pick up certain cards. If I have a Notoriety with 52 seconds left on it, and a Mystique, Ill click+hold the Notoriety, wait for the Mystique to get sucked up, then stop worrying about it, because the Notoriety will disappear before that 60 second Detective timer ends. Tenasscity fucked around with this message at 08:41 on Feb 11, 2019 |
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Feb 11, 2019 07:57
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team overhead smash posted:Are there any good ways to generate dread to stave off fascination? Other people have already done good answers to this but I'll add that if you have a Hunter on the board and don't mind notoriety, talking to them about Winter Lore will always generate Dread. Guaranteed. Other than that, have you ever gone to the White Door? If you have, chain-dreaming it over and over again is an easy way to find Restlessness, which becomes Dread. There are places to dream of that can make Dread easier but they are much harder to get to. Tenasscity posted:DO NOT forget that if you are holding something with your mouse, it will NOT be sucked up into a needy card slot. I understand that it isn't but this always felt like an exploit to me.
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Feb 11, 2019 11:28
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i sort of considered it "your personal attention" and was ok with it until i read the above and realised "oh poo poo, you can pause and do stuff can't you" in other news, gently caress permanently losing stat cards due to rear end in a top hat idiot cultists not succeeding on "we'll certainly defeat this curse" checks!! 90% max success chance leads to amazing instances of King Crucible and Ezeem being driven off by some fuckin' villagers every so often
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Feb 11, 2019 12:20
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I like the idea of some villagers running off King Crucible by throwing poo poo at him. "METAL IS WATER FLESH IS SMOKE- AH gently caress STOP. STOP IT. poo poo. FINE I'M LEAVING"
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Feb 11, 2019 13:22
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I wish more Names were summonable than there are. I'd like to call Ghirbi down and give him a vacation once in a while.
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Feb 11, 2019 14:06
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