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[Cruxador]

I think this thread amazes me most because sooo many of you see to have a wealth of experience and knowledge about this game. Where and how did you first find out about this game, those of you who would consider yourselves 'experienced'?

Nobody's experienced, you gotta explore the game and find stuff out and test things in the sandbox mode and talk to other people playing the game. That last one's the key, really.

[lemon10]

Why all the restarts? Aside from the one time that my starting map demon literally killed all but 3 people in my sect ( 3/4 inners, 6/8 outers, plus dog; the 3 remaining were all barely conscious due to snake venom), I haven't encountered any situations that had me rerolling.

So far the game seems fairly forgiving overall - losses hurt, sure, but there's an infinite number of new disciples to recruit to fill in the ranks of the fallen. (One good thing about Immortal - it turns up the encounter rate so high that you'd think your sect was in the middle of a trade route - constantly new potentials wandering onto the map.)

If you don't understand reputation its pretty easy to lose actually. Most notably taking artifact events, being evil/good and going to the opposite sects and winning kunlun can boost your rep above what you can actually survive without you ever understanding that any of its actually doing you any long term damage, as seen in my sect where I got my rep up to 5500 accidentally and PS elders that I couldn't beat with my dudes started coming out of the woodwork at the slightest provocation.
Of course this is going to take like 200 days or whatever and is more about the quests you take than about if you made a dozen mistakes with your dudes and it obviously isn't the reason for most restarts, but it is very very possible.

As for why all the restarts, it just feels painful to look at stuff go so horribly at be at like day 50 with no progress made or just be so obviously screwed up even if it doesn't really matter in any meaningful sense over the long term.

It showed up on my radar quite a while ago, though I largely dismissed it as 'yet another colony builder' until it cropped up here. It's taken a while, but I finally realized that despite its trappings... it isn't a colony builder, at least in the conventional sense. It's a pyramid scheme. 

Yeah, I thought it was a rimworld clone with a cheap "cultivator" focus the day before I bought it, but it totally isn't in any way and from the first minute I played it I was honestly impressed with how different and how unique it was.
The first real ingame indicator to me is that you have very little control over what tasks your dudes do. You can set them a task and a single focus, but beyond that you can't tell them what to do or where to focus on at all, which can be really frustrating when you want your dude to be more optimized and say, craft->tailor if no crafting is available while still having other stuff theoretically checked.
But I don't think that's a design or interface weakness as it might look at first glance, I think its a deliberate decision to minimize the importance of and interaction with your peons, because the game isn't about survival or their stories in the same way as DF or rimworld at all. Its about getting your main dudes really really buff, and just basically ignoring everyone who can't magic kung-fu stab people to death.
So you just set up something that works at the start of the game as far as they go, and then just ignore those dudes for the entire rest of the game and never have to really care about them unless they accidently die in a fire or whatever.

I think this thread amazes me most because sooo many of you see to have a wealth of experience and knowledge about this game. Where and how did you first find out about this game, those of you who would consider yourselves 'experienced'?

3 weeks ago, a disgusting amount of time played, and a lot of time spent lurking on and helping people on the discord.
The discord is the big thing, because it has loads and loads of guides and information (more then the ones on the steam page EuchreJack linked) and a bunch of people willing and able to answer any question you might have outside the endgame in real time at any time of the day.

Even still, with over a hundred hours in the game I still haven't touched at all on at least 4 major systems (body cults, divine cults and at least two major endgame crafting systems) and still have a long way to go if I want to know everything about the game.

[Aoi]

I saw it mentioned somewhere that there're major difficulty jumps once you hit 500 and 4000 rep (specifically, I believe it said the rival factions will start throwing GC and PS-tier practitioners at you, respectively). As long as you don't push your rep up, you can sort of limp along at your own pace.

Also something I realized in the middle of my current round: Using the starting option that puts you in the middle of the mountains might be one of the better starts-- you start off with plentiful brownstone, iron, and ice crystals, at the cost of little wood and soil (the former of which is a fairly inexpensive purchase), but more importantly, a ton of caskets that you can go play RNG roulette on and hope for high-powered books. And once you dig out the place, you can spend a few hundred days turning the entire map into normal soil and go on like usual.

[EuchreJack]

Why all the restarts?

I just wanted to see all the possible starting scenarios.  I've probably seen 90% of them.

Personally, my favorite start is the medical supplies start.  All that yummy Red Ginseng and Ganoderma means everyone can be an Inner Disciple!

[Frumple]

... wait, starting scenarios? What?

[lemon10]

... wait, starting scenarios? What?

I assume he's just talking about how you can have your dudes start with different things when you gen your characters (eg. what law you start with, how many uses you start with, etc).

I would disagree about the best start though. In my opinion the goal is to get stuff that's hard or exceedingly difficult to get at the start of the game. One or two things are basically useless (eg. starting with a sword that will take your first smith a hour to hammer out, a minor protection boost for just a single dude), and a few others are fairly useful at the start (eg. extra construction material, starting with an artifact, free food, extra medicine that is just worth a month of gathering from a good herb garden) but then quickly thereafter become irrelevant and within a month or two don't matter in the slightest.

There is quite a few stuff that is helpful over a longer time period as well, which is basically anything that gives you hard to find extra knowledge, most notably manual savior since it always gives you the super amazing soul inquiry as well as some pretty good books, although the advanced talismans aren't too shabby either. You can also start with a single advanced law, and getting to pick a free one of those can make a big difference early game since otherwise you probably aren't going to get one you want till PS.


But the best stuff is the people, which is why the +2 picks is probably the best of the bunch. Assuming you know what the law requirements are (or you have the view law requirement mod installed) you can gen what's equivalent to a years worth of non-agency recruitment in like 20 seconds and start out with 4 perfect inner disciples for 4 different laws (and your loyal outer crafter).

[Sirian]

So, I'm embarrassed to say that I have waited this long before doing my first agency recruitment. In my defense, the thing costs 100 influence and I didn't think it would be any better than just the usual 1-2 disciples being sent your way. I also restarted recently and I had barely touched agencies in my previous games.

Turns out, even at my low reputation level I get a convenient list of 35 disciples to choose from, that I can sort by stat, age etc... This will be a tremendous help and I don't think I'll ever go back to other recruitment methods. (Also you can directly send them to your agencies, which helps a lot in filling the ranks)

[EuchreJack]

... wait, starting scenarios? What?

I would disagree about the best start though.

Just to clarify, I said Favorite start, not best start.  I know that the materials that you get with the medical supplies start are easily acquired via trade and exploration. 
It's just my Favorite start to goof around.  What other start can get you 3 inner disciples on day one?  It's not good necessarily, its just fun.

So, I'm embarrassed to say that I have waited this long before doing my first agency recruitment. In my defense, the thing costs 100 influence and I didn't think it would be any better than just the usual 1-2 disciples being sent your way. I also restarted recently and I had barely touched agencies in my previous games.

Turns out, even at my low reputation level I get a convenient list of 35 disciples to choose from, that I can sort by stat, age etc... This will be a tremendous help and I don't think I'll ever go back to other recruitment methods. (Also you can directly send them to your agencies, which helps a lot in filling the ranks)

Thanks for sharing, I had never used agency recruitment either.  I know what I'm doing later!

[Aoi]

100 influence is cheap later on; I open up all the non-city outposts ASAP since most of them can produce grain and be self-sufficient, and they give 10 influence each. Open all of them up, and you can get an army of disciples (5 minimum, I believe) every day.

I was referring to the starter terrain in the map options. You can pick stuff like extra mountains, more water, more plants but less rocks, etc. in addition to other features like a rift that pops random stuff out ranging from a few logs to an ARMY OF BEARS.

[Akura]

I started a new game after playing this once and not playing it for a few weeks(and another new game, because I screwed up a bit during chargen). It's Day 16, and a Tiger Yaoguai showed up asking to join. His stats are showing that he's going to have a transformation tribulation in 85 days. Is this going to result in everyone's probable death, or just his?

[Frumple]

Eh, eighty five days is a decent buffer? Might be survivable. If it's not, puppy+something else (maybe even a bunch of outers with bows... especially hunting bows, in my experience) can probably kill it.

In any case, if it gets close and you don't think it'll work out, either banish them* or tell them to go to a distant corner of the map when the tribulation's about to happen (one time I've actually had a yaoguai tribulation happen so far, I assigned them a cushion far away from everything else when it about started), if you're looking to harvest some demon fur and beast blood.

But yeah, if you don't pop the thing off in the middle of your buildings there probably won't be much collateral damage.

e:*I think you can assign them to assist at an agency, too, if you haven't promoted them? Maybe not as the primary agent, but the helpers might work.

[Unknown72]

Here's a weird question, would anyone be interested in a Story Fort kinda thing for this game? I've been playing it since release and also learned as much as I can from all the guides and people to the point where I pretty much know most of anything for it (doesn't mean i'm good at it though ngl xD) and was thinking about doing a story fort kinda thing for it since I thought it'd be interesting.

[EuchreJack]

Here's a weird question, would anyone be interested in a Story Fort kinda thing for this game? I've been playing it since release and also learned as much as I can from all the guides and people to the point where I pretty much know most of anything for it (doesn't mean i'm good at it though ngl xD) and was thinking about doing a story fort kinda thing for it since I thought it'd be interesting.

Sure.  Let's Play has been kinda quite lately anyways.

[MCreeper]

I proudly made my first GC3 on day 215, only to find out that GC3 is supposed to be the first, basic-disposable GC. Why it is basic-disposable? Because someone got to cast those 20k mana weather spells for perfect "stars are left". And maybe craft some pills. And that's, apparently, it.  Although with enough persistence GC7 six paths can do the same.

On the other end, perfectionist guy on other forum (i like him for useful and comprehensive guides) apparently spent all not sleeping or eating time since english release learning every single little thing in first half of the game, rolling the game to summer and then starting over (and over and over) because something went slightly wrong. For the last game he cycled trough more than 10 maps to find just perfect one. And got smote on day 12 by +300 rep from blessed sect status. *censored!* (c)

[Unknown72]

I proudly made my first GC3 on day 215, only to find out that GC3 is supposed to be the first, basic-disposable GC. Why it is basic-disposable? Because someone got to cast those 20k mana weather spells for perfect "stars are left". And maybe craft some pills. And that's, apparently, it.  Although with enough persistence GC7 six paths can do the same.

On the other end, perfectionist guy on other forum (i like him for useful and comprehensive guides) apparently spent all not sleeping or eating time since english release learning every single little thing in first half of the game, rolling the game to summer and then starting over (and over and over) because something went slightly wrong. For the last game he cycled trough more than 10 maps to find just perfect one. And got smote on day 12 by +300 rep from blessed sect status. *censored!* (c)

Yea I've found that a lot of the guides and players are kinda optimizers. Not that that's a bad thing, optimizing the game for the best result can be fun especially if you know what you're doing. But there's a lot of peeps like me that just like to learn and go without trying to optimize much of anything. Like I love to make my rooms look good, which is why I use the Altars of Magic from Kunlun (they're basically Cushions you can assign to cultivators, with the altars themselves having an insane Qi Gather of 600, but not fengshui and are 5x3 in size, so it's not the best you could make) but that's not the best setup possible you can get, since you can easily beat that with a good diamond design around a Qi Gather cushion you unlock at 500 rep.

Honestly, I've found if you manage your rep properly, you can do whatever the hell you want and progress as slow or as optimized as you want tbh. I have a 1000+ day game I finished the other night and in the end only had around 3400 rep, while others with high optimized runs are beating the game at 15000+ rep and cultivators that could stomp mine if we went into the PVP area in the game (though i've been avoiding the PVP, people put a lot of hacked/cheated characters into it).