Give a newbie 1st officer advice?

[peppergomez]

Avast mates. Just began this game and am about 2 weeks in to the time line when things are still easy going.

I don't have a lot of time for gaming so I try to avoid having to restart games.

Can folks provide some basic advice on how to manage things in the early part of the game to avoid Disaster and having to restart later on? I've read a few threads where folks have said they've had to do that.

So far I have let all the people who wanna get on like the stow away and the dog handler join the crew. I am limiting rations I think by 25% Ditto fuel.

Thanks in advance for any tips folks can share.
I am new to this genre of gaming I think Sunless Skies is probably the closest type of game to this that I have played.

[Stupendous Man]

Tip 1: Always always always make sure everyone is employed, this includes engineers scouts and scientists. Your scouts should always be scouting especially early on, but later on you can shove them on other jobs in a pinch. Your scientists should always be either researching for that Decorum boost or whipping up medical comforts in the medbay. Engineers early on won't have much to do since the temperature isn't that low, so don't be afraid to put them to work shoveling coal or hunting early on.

Tip 2: When you get the chance to grab tools, prioritize scouting equipment, the Medbay upgrade and the guns. You will be able to grab all of them without any conflicting with each other, so don't worry about having to choose between them.

Tip 3: Once the rations on the Temperance start going soggy, don't waste any time digging them out. 10 Hoosh for 1 malnourished crew just isn't worth it. Put them on hunting or shoveling coal instead.

Tip 4: On the Hunting note, Locations despawn once you send a group out to them, regardless of whether or not you sent the max people you could or not. When hunting either of the types of Large game or Emperor Penguins make sure that you are sending the max amount of people. However, if you are scouting efficiently you should have way more hunting spots than you could ever feasibly get too fully, so don't be afraid to send one or two guys to a small game spot, if you have leftover manpower and dogs at the end of the day.

Tip 5: When hunting large game, one of the two crew you send will become wounded no matter what. As such, it is a good idea when hunting large game to send out crew that are freezing or malnourished, since one of them will be in the medbay the next day anyway.

Tip 6: Don't be afraid to let crew get freezing/malnourished. At the end of the day you can heal once crew of malnourishment just by giving normal rations and two with extra rations. Freezing is a bit different since the temperature isn't constant throughout the game, but you should be able to to heal at least 1 for most of the game. Additionally, your medbay should be able to hold at least 3 by that time, so you can handle having 3 Freezing/malnourished crew at the end of the week AFTER you account for healing them with rations and fuel. Try to make sure you will have 3 or less though, because if you don't someone WILL DIE.

Tip 7: In regards to decorum (which I'll call morale from here on out for the sake of convenience) you will want to keep it around 50 or so, in order to get the benefits of positive morale events while still having enough to counteract the negative ones. If it gets too low, just crank up the fuel or rations at the end of the day and you will be fine. In the same vein, demoralization will happen very rarely as long as you are keeping everyone alive. I think I got a grand total of 8 crew demoralized throughout the entire game and all of it was either from a scripted event that I couldn't avoid or from an either or choice I made to get some loyalty from specialists. While curing it can be done with an interview, It is important to note that demoralized goes away automatically after 2 weeks, so at most you are looking at -10 morale per demoralized crew. If a Scientist or Scout gets demoralized, I'd recommend just taking the morale loss, since their jobs are much more important than regular crew. On that note, you should be interviewing someone every day regardless for the +5 morale, but make sure it is a sailor or engineer who isn't needed.

Tip 8: When you get the ability to turn the stowaway into a specialist, I'd recommend engineer. As an engineer, he can cure freezing to help keep your medbay load lower, and he can still be put on other jobs if you are good on heat. If you put him in the medbay he becomes unavailable for other jobs for the rest of the game. If you are REALLY struggling, you could put him on medbay, but unless you are going to be using that extra slot every week, it's better for him to be an engineer imo.

Tip 9: When it comes to specialist end of day conversations, avoid negative dialogue options for Grimley, Nutlee, and Cordell. If you get negative loyalty with one of them, I recommend starting the week over since the margin for error is pretty low for them if you want to get their loyalty by the end of the game.

Tip 10: On day 3 during the night event, make sure you exit the boiler room BEFORE assigning sailors to the valves. I didn't realize this the first few times, but you can leave the boiler room and assign 3 sailors to the coal bunker, giving you 3 extra coal sacks.

Tip 11: Move out onto the Ice AFTER assigning 3 guys to the coal bunker on day 7 and BEFORE Dinner. Trust me.

That's all I can give without getting into major spoiler territory. If you follow those tips though, you shouldn't really have any trouble getting to the end with everyone alive and happy. Good luck and stay warm :).

[peppergomez]

Great reply, thank you very much!

[peppergomez]

I don't think I took your advice for tip 11, but I am into my 8th week and am not sure what the consequence of not doing that was or is. Can you tell me?

[Stupendous Man]

The Temperance will have a flooding incident on day 7 after the meal, which causes 2 crew to become demoralized and 2 crew to become freezing, and the Temperance breaks apart on Day 8. Therefore, the best time to move onto the ice is on day 7 before the meal, since you can still get coal from the bunkers if you decided to stay onboard instead of moving onto the ice on day 6.

[peppergomez]

OK no I didn't do that bummer So now I do have the demoralization and freezing conditions on some of my crew

[peppergomez]

At what point in the game should my med bay be able to hold 3? And how do I do that?

I'm at week 8.

[Stupendous Man]

Once you move out onto the ice , you get another medbay slot. That coupled with the medbay upgrade from the temperance hold should give you three slots.

[peppergomez]

With regards to negative dialog options there's no way to really tell when the dialog option is negative am I correct?

[peppergomez]

Originally posted by Stupendous Man:

Once you move out onto the ice , you get another medbay slot. That coupled with the medbay upgrade from the temperance hold should give you three slots.

Thanks

[Stupendous Man]

Originally posted by peppergomez:

With regards to negative dialog options there's no way to really tell when the dialog option is negative am I correct?

While there is not a surefire way to tell if a dialogue option is going to be negative, the more you get to know the characters the easier it will be to get the positive options and avoid the negative ones. For example: Kurt likes it when you are upbeat and cheerful and dislikes it when you tell him he is getting old or to shut up. Kasha likes it when you are encouraging and dislikes it when you tell her to stop whining. After around week 13 I was able to consistently get the positive options on the first try with all the characters, and rarely had to reload a choice. The hardest day for me was day 4, when there is an insane amount of dialogue and you don't really know the characters all that well yet.

[peppergomez]

makes sense, thanks

[peppergomez]

If a crew member gets frostbite do you only have 1 week to heal them?
Also, if more than 3 crew members have frostbite, how do you heal them all? I lost 3 crew members to frostbite between week 15 to 16, so I'm going to need to hopefully just redo week 15 to avoid that.

Any tips?

[Stupendous Man]

If more than 3 crewmembers have frostbite/scurvy then you are going to lose some people unfortunately. Even with medical comforts you can only treat 3 at max per week (4 if you made runt a doctor) This is why it is important to make sure you don't have more than 3 that are freezing/malnourished at the end of each week. The trick is to cure people of freezing during the week so you don't have any that are still frozen at the end. Some ways you can heal frozen crew members during the week is to burn elephant seals as fuel to instantly cure freezing for a random crew member. Also, Engineers can be employed at the furnace to cure people of freezing. Finally, frozen crew members can be assigned to the medbay to cure them if you have room.

[peppergomez]

Thanks how do you employ engineers at the furnace?

[peppergomez]

Also if you put medical comforts in the hoosh pot does that do anything