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I think the big problem with lessons is that they’re timed cards, so you have to specifically set aside time in your game just for building stats. Increasing stats sucks up the near exclusive use of both Work and Study, plus the advancement cards, and then any time spent on lessons that then decay is totally wasted. So it really demands your full attention while you do it, making the best time to do it when you have no other pressing need for advancements or Study, which is always going to be the start of the game. But if Lessons Learnt were just permanent cards (like collection books), it would suddenly be viable to just gradually improve your attributes as you play.
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May 9, 2019 16:32
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I never found stat grinding much of a speed bump myself. You do it once or twice early on and then you do it later when you've found more efficient ways to get glimmerings or even the lessons learnt while you wait for some other timer to finish.
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May 9, 2019 16:41
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Yeah, if the Lessons Learnt was permanent or even on a more generous timer it’d be fine.
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May 9, 2019 16:44
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Lessons Learnt make it much easier than trying to get 8 active Glimmerings at once, I found. But your Cult May Vary.
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May 9, 2019 17:30
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Personally I think they should remove the grindy nature altogether. The first point can still come in the same way, but then make later points instead require two Glimmerings plus some rarer, more occult things you can't just grab from making mundane paintings, like Lores or... assistance. That way you can do some ground work but in order to go Full Picasso you need to cult it up.
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May 9, 2019 21:33
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I figured out how the save files worked, and made my glimmerings last like 15 minutes. WAY easier to get stuff done. I mean, I couldn't make it so every one of those started at 15 minutes, I had to jump in the save file when I wanted to do that each time, but by that point I was a bit worn out anyway.
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May 10, 2019 01:54
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Eh, I've never found the stat grind to be that much of a problem except for reason. If you're grinding for health, you can work physical labor, each time it produces a vitality and also has odds of creating a Heart induction which would create yet another vitality. Glimmering is even easier. When you paint with passion (as opposed to notoriety or mystique), you have odds of generating glimmerings. They can also be found super commonly in the Wood and you can lock their timers by using them as inspiration while painting. If you're hitting up the bookstore, you can also fish out books that will give you Lessons learned which speeds things up even faster. With the exception of reason, you should never need to actually study the stat card itself except to make the lessons or level up the cards. Zengetsu fucked around with this message at 00:57 on May 11, 2019 |
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May 10, 2019 21:42
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Oh man, this game. Learning new things already!
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May 10, 2019 23:01
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I forget what got me to pick this game up exactly, but I did, and the one thing I'd heard about it is that it's way better to go into it completely blind. So I did, and my first run at the game actually wound up making...progress is the wrong word, but it lingered on for a couple hours before I eventually got sick and died or something. Over the course of this, I completely by accident managed to get myself into the Mansus through the Wood without really realizing what I was doing. What the screenshots don't show you is that when you go to the Mansus there is A Noise, and then a transition. I was very surprised by this, and worried for a moment that I screwed up the game. On my second run, I managed to piece together what was needed to get to the Mansus via the Wood...and then actually encountered a bug in the game that screwed my save up when I got there, so I was pretty suspicious of the place for a long while after that.
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May 11, 2019 05:37
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I first started playing this game when I was sick and feverish and it just added to the whole experience really. I tried to explain it to other people, gave up, and made this instead.
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May 11, 2019 14:09
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Ayndin posted:
It's a very good Noise. It's got a very 'reality just fractured and I'm not sure where I am' vibe to it. ... Frankly, all of the sound design for the game is surprisingly good.
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May 11, 2019 15:08
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It's gotta be said, this is one of those weird games where the gameplay is less interesting than experiencing the game, and the weird state of mind playing it the first time puts you in. The only game I've played that did it better was Pathologic, although that was a more "oh god everything is terrible and depressing and weird" feeling, rather than a "fever-brainedly trying to understand the eldritch workings of the universe (and also the game mechanics)" feeling.
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May 12, 2019 00:38
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Covski posted:It's gotta be said, this is one of those weird games where the gameplay is less interesting than experiencing the game, and the weird state of mind playing it the first time puts you in. The only game I've played that did it better was Pathologic, although that was a more "oh god everything is terrible and depressing and weird" feeling, rather than a "fever-brainedly trying to understand the eldritch workings of the universe (and also the game mechanics)" feeling.  Look at all those icons along the bottom of the window. What do they mean? What do all the 2s and 4s signify? Is it good or bad that they're there? You can click on them to figure out what they're called, but that's basically about it. Most of those icons are Aspects, but early in the game a new player won't understand what Aspects even are. In some ways I feel like the mechanics updates are actually pulling the curtain a little too far away, given how little a new player would know at this point.
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May 12, 2019 03:28
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TheOneAndOnlyT posted:In some ways I feel like the mechanics updates are actually pulling the curtain a little too far away, given how little a new player would know at this point. This is fair comment, and is one of the reasons I decided to completely separate the two rather than just insert the mechanics comments in italics as is common in most narrative/mechanics mixed LPs. One of the things I'm explicitly cutting out from the LP is all the time you would spend going "I have no idea what to even loving do" as a new player, partly because I'm not a new player (so I'd feel kind of silly pretending I have no clue what I'm doing), and partly because I can't think of a way to really replicate that in a way that's not kind of boring to read. This is why the narrative updates come second, my hope is that people read the Narrative LP and understand sort of what is happening, but not exactly how or exactly why, and then get an explanation shortly after, getting the confusion but in a more digestible format.
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May 12, 2019 09:13
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I for one am completely fine with the mechanics updates as I'm not likely to play this myself, but would still like to know how it works. It's like dwarf fortress- fun to hear about, hell to actually play
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May 12, 2019 09:55
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Yeah I think the mechanics updates are fine. I feel like trying to insert them into the narrative bits might break the flow too much
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May 12, 2019 16:11
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It feels like a good split to me, but I've beaten Apostle stuff. (though I looked up the how to as I'm bad at solving that kind of mystery.) Looking forward to a steady exploration of the weirdness on the desk. Makes me wonder if a few things would benefit from a webm or gif or something. Like some of the weird fade ins in the shadows and the entry to the Mansus.
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May 12, 2019 17:01
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“A cult of one member is only an unusual habit” is a great piece of writing. Also, please show us your tableau so we can criticize your setup.
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May 12, 2019 17:20
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Fat Samurai posted:“A cult of one member is only an unusual habit” is a great piece of writing. The writing is excellent overall but the  s are always the best parts.
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May 12, 2019 18:47
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Malachite_Dragon posted:I for one am completely fine with the mechanics updates as I'm not likely to play this myself, but would still like to know how it works. It's like dwarf fortress- fun to hear about, hell to actually play it is not hell to play dwarf fortress is a battle against the interface; cultist simulator's interface is very clear. the post about "clear on the how, opaque on the why" is spot on. i would compare getting stuck in cultist sim to a timed BABA is YOU puzzle, with all the apocalyptic frustration/oh god it makes sense now that this would entail.
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May 13, 2019 20:45
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Tylana posted:It feels like a good split to me, but I've beaten Apostle stuff. (though I looked up the how to as I'm bad at solving that kind of mystery.) Looking forward to a steady exploration of the weirdness on the desk. Makes me wonder if a few things would benefit from a webm or gif or something. Like some of the weird fade ins in the shadows and the entry to the Mansus. I figured out the forge apostle victory on my own and good lord, starting from detailed yet cryptic instructions to gradually piece together what everything refers to and where to find the various bits of information needed to progress was both frustrating and enthralling. It took me around a week but when that final timer ended, I was so proud of myself.
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May 14, 2019 00:08
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Will be watching this one closely, as I do love this game. I've had a few nights where I made a lot of progress and ended up flat out not sleeping, which really felt like it fit with the whole theme of the game, as I feverishly poured over the new info I was getting while pushing on for just one more scrap! Good fun.
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May 14, 2019 04:15
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Malachite_Dragon posted:I for one am completely fine with the mechanics updates as I'm not likely to play this myself, but would still like to know how it works. It's like dwarf fortress- fun to hear about, hell to actually play It's not really hell to play, the mechanics are pretty simple, though I will say that it is definitely a slow and grindy game and that's something that really gets under some people's skin and a common complaint directed toward it. You gotta make peace with the fact that you're gonna be doing repetitive actions a lot if you're gonna enjoy it. This is turning out to be a pretty good LP to absorb the game through though if you're not interested in playing.
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May 14, 2019 04:51
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Page 34+i Dear Diary, Awareness is an odd experience in a dream. I used to have lucid dreams in my childhood, with all the fun that power over reality grants. This is different, it's almost the opposite of a lucid dream; rather than the power that comes with lucidity, the awareness I have here in the Wood is of how small I am. At least for now. Wandering The Wood is a fascinating experience. In some ways, it is like any wood in the waking world. It is dark, as if in twilight, and teeming with life, though curiously creatures here do not seem afraid of me as a human would spook the inhabitants of lesser woods. Perhaps that means this place is without fear...or there are things so terrible that a mere human barely rates as a mild threat. I've quickened my pace at that thought. I'm hearing whispers on the leaves. I feel an urge to stop, focus on those whispers. They sound like the dreams of others, the imagined conversations of my fellow sleepers. But that's not why I'm here. Exploration is the priority for this first expedition.  After a journey that seems to have lasted both a minute and a week, I've arrived. I knew it was here and I knew this was my destination, even though I didn't know I was looking for The Well. It has a bucket to draw from, but tonight My Well is overflowing with tears and blood. I'm not here to drink though. I will dip my head in, and inhale. Page 35  I awoke this morning gasping for air. As sense returned and my nerves calmed, that Awareness from my dream rose to the fore. The thunderous beating of my heart; the rumbling of my stomach; blood rushing everywhere in my body. A large breakfast barely sated me, and I felt tense with desire all day. I might have embarrassed some people on the streetcar by staring too long.  After work, I visited Morland's to buy a book. Ms Morland recommended this one "on account of your current interests".  ...Perusing the contents, I'm not quite sure how to take that. Page 36 I found it hard to sleep last night, my mind racing with hunger. For food, yes, but also knowledge, also progress. I need to get things...moving. What I took from The Well must be affecting my body as well as my thoughts. I am lurching from base feelings to heightened alertness, like a drug that is both stimulant and depressant. I should take care not to do anything rash.  Cat and I went out tonight to some of the darker cafes in the city. In whispered words we spoke to strangers about some of our truths.  My Heart was racing, I felt a burning at the back of my throat. Maybe it was the thrill of talking of forbidden knowledge, the danger of being Known. Maybe it was that confidence that burned in us like a quiet fire that wouldn't go out, with each passionate breath drawing our audience closer. Closer--  In any case, we met someone tonight, a lovely lad by the name of Neville. He was shy at first, as some boys are. Very sweet. Our attention wasn't wasted on him, I saw potential. I explained that I was seeking to open doors, he paused and stammered that he "could be my key". Adorable. He's right, but he doesn't know how.  I'll be seeing Neville again tomorrow night. Page 38 I confess, dear diary, that I am impressed with Neville. At first I worried I might have scared the shy boy off, would he accept an invitation to a woman's home the day after meeting her? But he Knocked my door exactly on time. No answer from me, a test. He turned the handle, and stepped inside anyway. He passed.  I asked him why he accepted my invitation. I might have been visibly quivering with anticipation. He told me that last night, he had dreamt of a Door, which he knew he needed to open. I offered to help with that.  At dawn, I bathed him in the sun's reflection, and he was mine.   I think Neville will be a useful boy. I sense in him a talent for getting places people shouldn't go, taking things people shouldn't take. For the time being, I have assigned him the task of exploring the city. Page 39  Sickness. The peril of a mortal body. Sadly too common in the life of a doctor. Perhaps the experience at The Well masked the early symptoms, or maybe I confused some of those symptoms with the effects of The Well. Regardless, I've been confined to bed for a while.  I suppose it shall give me time to read.   Page 40   This account deals with matters of change and loss. I've condensed the metaphors and anedotes into a much slimmer volume in my notes, The Ecdysiast's Parables.   Amusingly, Neville reported back today that he has located an establishment which concerns itself with similar notions. Cat suggested we three might pay a visit when I am in better health.  In the meantime, I am going to revise my current notes to see what can be learned. Page 41 While I study and recover, I have asked Cat and Neville to look into something I have been holding onto for a long time.  Some of my last unpursued leads from the Lydia case notes, those half-coherent snippets about places she was interested in. It's time to see what places we can find from them.  Before she left, Cat brought me some medicine and wished me well. I don't know what I'd do without her. Page 42  Things are coming together again, This illness has battered me, but I will not be beaten.   The study of my notes is complete, and I feel my mind has only been strengthened by this period of forced inaction.   And Cat and Neville reported back on their explorations. Lydia's hints led them to this strange Church of St Felix. It seems Lydia was planning some sort of heist from the church's vault when things went wrong for her. I have some advantages she does not, but I will be patient where she failed. Time to start planning.
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May 14, 2019 23:15
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Mechanics Update 3 OK, so, The Mansus. What the gently caress is this. Dreaming with location cards connected to the Mansus brings you to this screen here. This is the only time in the entire game where your view deviates from just staring at a plain table with cards on it. As such it is a very striking moment the first time it appears, with that burning portalesque transition and a loud whooshing sound. I'll look into getting a video or gif of some sort but for now take my word for it that it's a very surprising moment the first time it occurs, especially if you're not forewarned. That this is the only situation where you're not looking at the table, it also goes a long way towards giving the Mansus this unique and kind of alien feel. Mechanically, though, the Mansus is pretty straightforward once you're here. We Dreamed with the card for The Wood. The Wood is connected to The Well and The Temple of the Wheel. There are three cards, one for each of these locations, and they're pulled from a list of roughly five possible cards for each location. We get to see The Wood card face up, but the other two are face down. When you pick a card, you get to see what the two face down cards were. We picked the card at The Well, and got a Grail influence for our efforts. Dragging the card back to The Wood wakes us up, and the card comes with us. Grail is the lore associated with needs and desires. Indulging yourself, indulging others, sacrifice and enticement are all a part of Grail. Back in the "real" world, lets finally get some more of the people I've been promising to talk about. We can use Lore with the talk action to try to meet people. This is another stumbling block for blind players, since it's not entirely clear what happens if you do it, some players are reluctant to try. If anything bad ever happens from this I've never seen it. Broadly speaking, there are five categories of "people": Followers, Patrons, Hirelings, Hunters, and Summons. Talking with lore lets you find the first two categories. Followers are people like Cat Caro and Neville, who I'll explain momentarily, and are recruited with Passion. Patrons are a small group of people who will offer you commissions to produce papers about certain lores in exchange for payment. Hirelings are temporary followers you can find through exploration. Hunters are spawned by Time Passing at a bad moment and want to get you locked up or worse. Summons are brought to this world through rituals. More on everyone who's not a follower when we meet them. Welcome to The Mirror of Glory, Neville! Let's talk more about followers. Each follower, once inducted into the cult, has a certain aspect associated with a particular lore. Cat Caro is a Lantern Follower, Neville is Knock. Regular believers have their aspect to the second magnitude. Over time we'll be able to promote our believers to Disciples, and level their aspect up to 5. Followers who match our cult can be promoted again to a higher level, Exalted, though the title changes based on the Cult. For the Mirror of Glory, our Exalted cultists are called Seers. The various actions our followers can perform succeed or fail based on the strength of their aspects, so levelling up your followers as quickly as possible is always a good strategy. One of the things our followers can do is explore on our behalf. I'm sending Neville off to explore, see what he finds. He comes back with the Ecdysis Club, one of the other "fixed" locations like Morland's Shop. At this point I want to pause and encourage you to look again at the icon for the Ecdysis Club and actually process what it depicts. You almost certainly missed it the first time. The Ecdysis Club. Exploring with it will usually generate Contentment, a useful safety card, in exchange for Funds. If you have The Dancer DLC, which added Moth and Heart victory paths, the Club is where you pursue those goals. We won't make huge use of it in our playthrough, but we might gamble for the occasional contentment if we're in a pinch. Last time I touched briefly on sickness. Here it is. Spawned by time passing, the Season of Sickness will steal one of your Health cards (not only an unexhausted one, thanks for the correction Solis) and transform it into Affliction. If we let the Affliction card time out, it transforms into Decrepitude, which means the health is (almost) permanently lost. To return an affliction to Health, we must dream using either funds or vitality, and after a minute the health returns. During this time we read a new book, which gave us our first piece of higher-level lore. The Ecdysiast's Parable is a Moth Lore of the Sixth Magnitude, and might end up being particularly useful...later...so we'll want to hang on to it. Lastly, let's talk about Secret Histories. Secret Histories are a special kind of Lore which are essentially only used for Exploration. We got this one from the prologue, but I didn't want to explain this too early. Secret histories can be acquired from Books or Locations, but the main way to acquire them is from the Mansus itself. This is one of the main reasons to keep dipping back into the Mansus, to get more and more Secret Histories. When we explore with Secret Histories, the Magnitude of the influence determines which deck of locations we draw from. The higher magnitude the history, the more secret the location, the tougher the challenges and the better the rewards. Here's what we found. Exploring this location will yield books and maybe other treasures. But there are dangerous challenges to be overcome in every location, which can injure or even kill your followers. In order to properly explore it, we'll need to mount an expediton. Right now we are totally unprepared for an expedition, so next time: probably not an expedition! --- Postly, There were a few requests to see how I have the tableau set up. Here's how it looks:  Just a few notes though, because of the LP I need to put the actions in the centre, or I'd have to keep dragging windows or the camera around to better centre the text. For the same reason the tray (the blue outline where new cards go) is also bottom middle. Top right is the Lore Library, which right now is sparse, but once full will have a column for each lore and a row for each magnitude. All the other stuff will get moved around as I get more cards and finally settle on where I want everything.
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May 14, 2019 23:18
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Well. Count me as one of those people who never thought to look up what "ecdysis" means.
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May 15, 2019 00:21
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I like the way you're using Cat and Neville in the story so far. For all this game's writing strength it's really easy to see most of the characters as just numbers with faces.
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May 15, 2019 00:39
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Cat 'n' Kate's Crazy Cult Club
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May 15, 2019 06:28
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HOLY poo poo YOU CAN SET A TRAY? That one was of the most annoying things for me was cards flying out not where I wanted them. You can't have multiple trays programmed per card type can you? So like all my lore cards will fly to the right but my stats will fly to the top of my screen when they refresh?
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May 15, 2019 08:17
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Gridlocked posted:HOLY poo poo YOU CAN SET A TRAY? No, just the one. It got added in a patch some time after release.
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May 15, 2019 09:07
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You know I've finished like 3-4 runs of this game and never actually processed what the Ecdysis Club icon was without it being pointed out here. Edit: INCLUDING a Dancer ascension so you'd think I'd have noticed.
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May 15, 2019 13:17
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My knowledge and patience petered out about... I'm guessing two updates from now at the current pace, so I'm looking forward to seeing how the hell the rest of the game works. I appreciate the Mechanics stuff alongside, too; this seems like a good format for this kinda game
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May 15, 2019 13:48
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Very much looking forward to reading through the LP as well, I got super burned out trying to figure out a way to get Lantern lore. Ended up with a whole lot of the other aspects, but just couldn't get any damned Lantern to pop.
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May 15, 2019 14:53
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Dr_Gee posted:Very much looking forward to reading through the LP as well, I got super burned out trying to figure out a way to get Lantern lore. Ended up with a whole lot of the other aspects, but just couldn't get any damned Lantern to pop. Regretfully I think that’s the grindy and repetitive part of the game. I think aspects of the game try to present things as risk/reward, but it’s so very easy to just take the safe route, especially since so many helpful things are irreplaceable.
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May 15, 2019 16:57
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The best and most interesting part of this game is the discovery of new things, and reading all of them. That mostly because once you 'get' the game, the game part is a little routine. For example, it's a luck of the draw really getting the lore you want early on, until you know where to look to get them, then it's a factor of time.
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May 15, 2019 17:01
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One day I will have a full set of lore of all magnitudes and my tableau will look tidy and neat at last. One day... How easy is to edit the timers and stuff? Some goon in the game thread managed to edit some .json files, IIRC.
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May 15, 2019 17:10
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Fat Samurai posted:One day I will have a full set of lore of all magnitudes and my tableau will look tidy and neat at last. One day... The editing is easy - \SteamApps\common\Cultist Simulator\cultistsimulator_Data\StreamingAssets\content\core contains the raw data and they're plain .json files you can edit with any text editor. With patience, creativity and a good sense of how to map the variables you could probably restructure the entire game in Notepad.
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May 15, 2019 17:59
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As a potentially useful note, many of the magnitude 2 Secret History locations can be completed with the appropriate hirelings. One of the things I see fairly consistently from many, many players is that undervalue of hirelings. They are absolutely amazing and can do wonders for really kick starting your cult off quickly. And if they fail and die? Well, they knew what they were signing up for and unlike your named Cultists, they're a renewable resource. Also, the game is sort of backwards from many in that, in my opinion, it brutally punishes those trying to play it safe. Either with boredom or attrition. It's far better to take risks and die quickly then to try hoard resources and then end up dying to that unforseen problem later on for new players. You have to come to a form of acceptance that you are going to die, but that next time you will be better and faster. If you try to play it safe, you'll likely just learn far less over a much longer period of time and still die anyway. Zengetsu fucked around with this message at 06:19 on May 16, 2019 |
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May 16, 2019 06:16
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Well, just got my second-ever standard victory in this game, not least because of this LP. And now I need to delve into unfamiliar (and likely more difficult) territory.Zengetsu posted:As a potentially useful note, many of the magnitude 2 Secret History locations can be completed with the appropriate hirelings. See, I've found not playing conservatively is fairly suicidal. You need to figure out how to manage the various classes of nastiness the game throws at you, but once you figure out risk management for the major axes of threat, the way to get a game to the end is to choke back on any risks once some threat crops up, then do what's needed to get things back in an acceptable state.
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May 16, 2019 07:48
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nweismuller posted:Well, just got my second-ever standard victory in this game, not least because of this LP. And now I need to delve into unfamiliar (and likely more difficult) territory. Firstly Congrats! Now ask yourself this, how many people had to die? :P Threat management is mostly about knowing what threats you can deal with on short notice and what you can't. Which I'll happily go into, but is deeper than the LP currently is so better in the Games thread or PM.
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May 16, 2019 08:47
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