Several questions, especially about contamination (after having unlocked 20 rooms)

[HapexIndustries]

As the title indicates, I've unlocked 20 rooms, mostly by using my relationship with the blacksmith and the midwife (Heart and Forge primarily). However, I've only managed to decipher 7 books.

I am relatively certain that this game is not unlike Cultist Simulator in that once you (the player) learn the mechanics the game becomes much easier. For instance, I just discovered how to use tools with the various desks. I don't mind the relative opacity of the gameplay, I understand that's part of its charm. Still, there are a couple things I'd really like to have clarified:

1. How do I get the various Assistant's to craft stuff and is this useful in Considering books or opening rooms?

2. What is the point of the beds?

3. Was I supposed to level up skills before putting them in the Tree? Because I didn't.

4. Do I simply have to wait until I find the appropriate desks to level up certain Soul aspects? This seems to put certain starts at a disadvantage.

5. How do I level up beyond 2, for Souls or Skills?

6. This is the big one: HOW DO I CURE MALADIES AND REMOVE CONTAMINATION? I read a contaminated book and now my Tryst is Despairing and I have no idea how to fix it, not to mention the book is apparently oozing contamination and will get my other books eventually. The game indicates it has Chionic Theoplasma and I can remove it with the appropriate skill and 7 Heart. Where and how do I do that? None of the desks I've unlocked accept heart.

I appreciate this game has a much more laid back pace than CS but the idea of spreading contamination has me stressing. With a little luck I can get 7 Heart together but I have no idea where to use it.

[ftoaster]

Originally posted by HapexIndustries:

Quoted stuff removed for post length

I'll add in a bit from my experience, for what it's worth!

1. Yeah, the assistants are there to help you open rooms (aside from a few that take different things, but I've only found like two of those as far as I am in the game). Crafting is the big thing that cracks the game open. Not only can you make items to boost assistants aspects (and then once you know how to make them, you can be a little more cavalier with using what you find), but you can also directly make memories as well.

2. The one case I'll put forth for putting visitors in beds is if they have a language you need, but you're broke. Just keep giving them a bed to sleep in repeatedly until next season so you can make the tally to pay for the language via the next visitor

3. It's possible to inconvenience yourself to varying amounts with which skills you slot (but like the loading screen says there's always a way forward, even if it's not the one you were going for originally), but there's only a few actual "dead ends" and I think those are getting fixed when they're found. I've not really been worrying about it, other than trying to keep my soul cards spread evenly in amount.

4. This is a balancing act for me of needing stronger cards vs spending time at the inn refreshing my one stronger card. I've been trying to keep two or three of each soul on hand and upgrading when I get more than that.

5. Yeah. To stress this because it took me forever to figure it out and I used some lessons needlessly: you don't even need the same lesson as the skill, you just need one lesson that matches an aspect of the skill, then the rest can be filled with any aspect-matching memories (which does include lessons, but that's the needless using I was talking about).

6. For my part I just put all the contaminated books aside until I figured out how to remove contamination.

As for generalized advice for smoothing this stage out, apologies if this is obvious but you don't need to have all the stats to begin with to get a book read, because it lets you have up 3 chances to increase it while reading. You get a randomly selected variety of adding different types of cards (eg souls, memory, wall art).