How does rolling students work?

[Logovore]

If I save before starting a student summon, I seem to only get the same faction and a few variations of that faction every time I restart. Anyone know how the rolling works - or is it engineered such that it's easier to just summon more students until you get what you want?

[PaloG]

Firstly we need to establish what's fixed and what's random about it.

Race order is fixed. No matter how many times you reroll a specific summon it'll always come out in that race.
Number and rarity of medallions are based on the wand. Tier 1 will be 3 bronze, Tier 2 will be 3 bronze and 2 silver and Tier 3 will be 3 Bronze, 2 Silver, a gold and a platinum.
The distribution of those trials/medallions is predetermined for each race. A Tier 3 Shattered for example will always have a bronze, silver and platinum in Serenity and 1 in each of the other areas with the 2nd silver and gold being randomly assigned between them. A Tier 2 Human will always have a bronze and silver in Tenacity and 1 in Heart, Spirit and Serenity with the second silver assigned randomly among those but none in Wisdom etc.
Trials/Medallions are also category and rarity dependent(besides flat stat boosts that can appear as medallions anywhere). E.g. Spirit will always be trials about winning battles, Tenacity will be house chores, Wisdom will be cast on a learning station x times under y conditions etc etc
Heart medallions are mostly +conviction in certain rooms or recreation boosts, Spirit are walking speed, immunity to statuses and crafting speed bonuses, Wisdom are teaching bonuses(either in speed or conviction), Serenity is permanent +conviction and Tenacity are mostly conviction for x hours after y task. +Element cap are also category locked. Heart for Water, Spirit for Air, Wisdom for Dark, Serenity for Earth and Nature and Tenacity for Fire and Lightning. (+1 at bronze and silver, +2 at gold and platinum). So if for example you want a Water mage that can Brew x3 faster and has a Water lvl of 7 you need a Tier 3 Wolfkin as they are the only race with access to the Spirit Platinum medallion which is the only that can give the "Do x task x3 faster" and you need it to roll their single Heart medallion into gold +Water cap(if you summon them as gifted bronze +1 too). Or if you want a Tier 2 Wolfkin with a Fire magic of 7 you will be rerolling forever as they don't get a Tenacity medallion so they don't have access to Fire/Lightning +cap till Tier 3.

With that out of the way let's move into the summoning.

If you load a fresh save each teacher/teacher combination will always give you the exact same student. So if you're rerolling try each one once. If none of them are what you want unpause the game for a mere second and drop a new save. Since you unpaused all of the students have now changed so you can repeat the process for new results. Interestingly the student you get in the instance where you unpause/pause when you make your new save will be different from the student the same teacher/combo will summon when you load the save again even though theoretically they're both paused at the same moment. But after you load the save that student will now also be fixed to the after load version so if you get a student you kinda like in that instance(the unpause/pause scenario) create a separate file as that one cannot be repeated after reloading.

And with that out of the way also lemme share an opinion.
If you're still going through the game normally I strongly advise against such a practice. The game is balanced in such a way that a suboptimal staff will have no problem with it. In fact save scumming the summons for minmaxed staff will completely trivialize it and erase whatever semblance of challenge there is. Sure, you can "fish" for specific race+wand combos like summoning a Shattered with a Tier 1 Water wand and reload to instead summon as gifted and give them a Tier 2 Nature to make them your gardener or whatever but anything past that will heavily impact your experience. If you've already gone through the "intended" experience and built a full, stable school with all your research, rooms and goals completed then and only then start doing this if you want to see how far things can be pushed.

[Soul4hdwn]

Originally posted by PaloG:

Firstly

You deserve every award

[Dirichlet]

Great post. Thanks for that.

Regarding save-scumming: I’m wondering if it was a mistake to let us summon gifted students at will (rather than it be a random chance). This leads the player towards summoning gifted if and only if they’re looking for a future staff member, and then viewing non-gifted as scroll fodder regardless of rolls. In actual fact, that’s probably a bad habit as non-gifted can be just as effective if they get good rolls, and gifted can be a liability in hard mode.

[PaloG]

Originally posted by Dirichlet:

Regarding save-scumming: I’m wondering if it was a mistake to let us summon gifted students at will (rather than it be a random chance). This leads the player towards summoning gifted if and only if they’re looking for a future staff member, and then viewing non-gifted as scroll fodder regardless of rolls. In actual fact, that’s probably a bad habit as non-gifted can be just as effective if they get good rolls, and gifted can be a liability in hard mode.

Indeed. There's pros and cons to both to be honest. It for sure changes the way you approach summoning and viewing your students and pushes a "dur dur go for highest number" mentality, which I'll cover why I think is wrong below, but now that the combat system changed it's also quite more important to have that guaranteed +1 to your main element so you can have access/upgrades to your very limited combat skills. Things like Earth Armor II or Shadow Cloak II can prove absolutely vital early with later game stuff like Flame Lash II and Haste II completely changing how you approach combat and what you're able to tackle, especially now that advanced potions aren't as ridiculous to get. Guaranteeing that small boost without sacrificing a medallion slot for it can prove very important. The other +1 to two of your secondary skills can also be very good or completely useless depending on where they land but I doubt many people pay attention to those.

However as you say it is often the case that the right medallions far outweigh the gifted bonus. Especially considering that you gain nothing for lvl 8 at the moment besides an additional +20% teaching speed for that element, like all previous ones, and just a tiny efficiency bump when you do a task for that element. Someone with a "Cooks twice as fast" medallion and a Fire stat of 5(which is the base for non gifted Tier 3 that you'd need to be to get that medallion, and even possible as a secondary stat for a gifted of a different element) will always be better at cooking than a Gifted with a Fire skill of 8 and not a cooking medallion. Same principle for a Fire combat mage for example. If you roll a gifted that can reach Fire 8 but gets a pitiful or no Mana from their medallions they're gonna be vastly inferior to a non gifted one that happened to roll the +2 Fire cap(as Flame lash 2 is I believe the lvl 7 upgrade) and like 200 mana on their medallions making them able to hit for 400-500 damage with it.

So yeah, they should be judged on individual suitability for a task/role and not just blindly go for highest cap

[Logovore]

Adding this from one of the guides for completeness here:

Each faction is responsible for a certain category of medallions (1st level of wand - 1 medallion in a certain category, 2nd level - 2 and 3rd level - 3):
Wolfkin - Spirit
Human - Tenacity
Raven Cult - Wisdom
The Shattered - Serenity
The Vivified - Heart

And each category can improve one of the elements from +1 to +4 (but to get +4, you need to sell your soul to the random's god, my maximum at the moment is level 8 of the main element):
Heart - Water
Spirit - Air
Wisdom - Dark
Serenity - Nature, Earth
Tenacity - Fire, Lightning

heart - WATER, HP, hp+spd/mana/pwr
spirit - AIR, SPD, spd+hp/pwr/mana
wisdom - DARK, PWR, pwr+spd/hp/mana
serenity - EARTH, NATURE, speed+mana+hp, pwr+spd+mana, pwr+spd+hp
tenacity - FIRE, LIGHTNING, MANA, mana+hp/spd/pwr