Recreation issue - GG

[FAIR]

It goes down too fast, the game became a chore with this constant debuff. I set recreation hours to 4 and still it's not enough. The potions are too expensive to craft. I found this particularly crippling for Dark mages. Craving for the moon + Craving recreation is -55 mood constantly but at short periods at night. With the ridiculous amount of time it takes to level a mage to 15+, the constant breakouts and loosing them due to the revive ritual time under 30 game minutes it's too much to handle. Scars also accumulate due to the constant revivals and the mage is gone after hours and hours of training. The higher the level the worst. Mages should become stronger with level, not the opposite. There needs to be a ritual to remove scars and the recreation bar decrease speed reduced significantly.

I had a good fun with the game but end-game in the current state is too stressful to be enjoyable. It became a constant micromanagement to avoid breakdowns. I'm not building, not fighting, not levelling new mages, just the constant threat of breakdowns. There is a lazy implementation of difficulty by adding obnoxious systems instead of adding better content as tougher fights or events. Can't be the higher the level of the mage the weaker it becomes, full of scars from battles and constant breakdowns, ♥♥♥♥ mood all the time, miss casts all the time. Not good.

[foimols]

build mana lanterns and stick them in your conservatory and where ever they frequent. the dark mages will get some moonlight while recreating/working

to answer your original issue, I usually have a time slot for recreating in the morning to give them the buff for during the day, and then more in the evening.

If there was some emergency that reduced a mage's recreation level to very low levels, I usually stick them in a 'rest' schedule where they do nothing but recreation until their bar is filled, then they go back to their regular work schedule...

[The God Ghetto Holy]

Originally posted by FAIR:

It goes down too fast, the game became a chore with this constant debuff. I set recreation hours to 4 and still it's not enough. The potions are too expensive to craft. I found this particularly crippling for Dark mages. Craving for the moon + Craving recreation is -55 mood constantly but at short periods at night. With the ridiculous amount of time it takes to level a mage to 15+, the constant breakouts and loosing them due to the revive ritual time under 30 game minutes it's too much to handle. Scars also accumulate due to the constant revivals and the mage is gone after hours and hours of training. The higher the level the worst. Mages should become stronger with level, not the opposite. There needs to be a ritual to remove scars and the recreation bar decrease speed reduced significantly.

I had a good fun with the game but end-game in the current state is too stressful to be enjoyable. It became a constant micromanagement to avoid breakdowns. I'm not building, not fighting, not levelling new mages, just the constant threat of breakdowns. There is a lazy implementation of difficulty by adding obnoxious systems instead of adding better content as tougher fights or events. Can't be the higher the level of the mage the weaker it becomes, full of scars from battles and constant breakdowns, ♥♥♥♥ mood all the time, miss casts all the time. Not good.

This isn't dissimilar to my current experience. Some of the needs aren't as balanced as others making it grossly disproportionate. It was nigh impossible to appease fire mage students since they need to murder things to be happy, while others just passively walk around and stay happy since their needs are simplistic.

I mean, I setup recreation so I didn't have tons of trouble with that, but having sooooo many hours where my mages have to dance their faces off felt so very strange. I ended up starting a new game and toning down the impact of needs with custom game. I wanna build rooms, blow up monsters, and so on, and I felt this was a massive hindrance to the experience.

[ulzgoroth]

Do they completely change recreation mechanics in Relentless? Because in the 'normal' mode it's set-and-forget trivial to keep everyone's recreation okay so long as you don't interrupt the regularly-scheduled window. (Though yes, if you use libations instead of dancing it costs a significant amount of rarer crops, some cooking, and a bunch of alchemy work.)

If level 3 dark makes craving for the moon not stable, make them sleep during the day (when if they were awake their moon exposure would drain) instead of at night, and of course make sure they're in moonlight all night. Adding some mana lanterns (which shed moonlight) to rooms they spend time in will also help, though AFAIK there's no corresponding trick for nature mages.

[Manxome]

Just to hit this point a little more explicitly: The moonlight need bar is PAUSED WHILE ASLEEP, so they need to be awake to fill it.

If you schedule them to be awake at night and put at least 1 window/glass roof (or mana lantern) in each of your major rooms, then it should stay full on its own.

(Sunlight need is also paused while asleep, but nature mages should be fine even if they sleep during the day, because you get sunlight for 2/3 of the day and moonlight for only 1/3.)

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Manxome:

Just to hit this point a little more explicitly: The moonlight need bar is PAUSED WHILE ASLEEP, so they need to be awake to fill it.

If you schedule them to be awake at night and put at least 1 window/glass roof (or mana lantern) in each of your major rooms, then it should stay full on its own.

(Sunlight need is also paused while asleep, but nature mages should be fine even if they sleep during the day, because you get sunlight for 2/3 of the day and moonlight for only 1/3.)

They don't need to be awake to fill it, I'm pretty sure. I've been keeping an eye on that.

However, if they sleep in the day, that will reduce how much they drain it.

[foimols]

actually they do not get charged if they are asleep. the Moonlight bar says something to the effect stopped while sleeping... :-(

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by foimols:

actually they do not get charged if they are asleep. the Moonlight bar says something to the effect stopped while sleeping... :-(

It still charges, I assure you. My necromancer is just fine. Only the drain is (presumably) stopped when sleeping.

[Manxome]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Originally posted by foimols:

actually they do not get charged if they are asleep. the Moonlight bar says something to the effect stopped while sleeping... :-(

It still charges, I assure you. My necromancer is just fine. Only the drain is (presumably) stopped when sleeping.

I just tested again, and confirmed that moonlight need definitely does NOT charge while sleeping.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3447311231
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3447311622

A mage with a tier 2 dark wand only requires 3.1 hours of moonlight per day to stay topped up, so you could potentially sleep for the majority of the night and still be fine. Night is 8 hours long and mages normally sleep for 6 hours per day, so you should normally have at least 2 waking hours at night, minimum. If their sleep is partly during day or they spend 1.1 hours around a mana lantern then they could be covered. But they DON'T fill the meter while asleep.

(I don't have tier 3 wands yet; not sure what it means for the need to be "intensified".)

[Soul4hdwn]

Originally posted by Manxome:

(I don't have tier 3 wands yet; not sure what it means for the need to be "intensified".)

Means the bar is smaller and thus need harder to maintain technically

[Draconis]

I set up a group for all who feel a need for moonlight and assigned a nightshift schedule to that group.

So far I had neither a problem with moonless dark mages nor a problem with them not getting enough sleep, so it seems to balance itself that way.

[Manxome]

Originally posted by Soul4hdwn:

Originally posted by Manxome:

(I don't have tier 3 wands yet; not sure what it means for the need to be "intensified".)

Means the bar is smaller and thus need harder to maintain technically

I just got my first tier 3 wand and preliminary tests suggest it's better understood as a faster drain, not a reduced maximum.

Tier 2 air wand drains at 4%/hour normally, and recharges 46%/hour on stairs.

Tier 3 air wand drains at 8%/hour normally, and recharges at 42%/hour on stairs. (Which probably means that the recharge is internally +50%/hour but doesn't disable the drain, and so the net effect is 50% minus the normal drain rate, and that's why it's 4pp smaller on a T3 wand.)

It doesn't fill up faster. It only drains faster. Which means you need to spend more hours per day filling it up in order to break even.

The bar is, of course, visually smaller, because the visual size of all need bars is always based on how many hours it takes to drain. But if the only change were a smaller max, then the drain and fill rates would have kept the same ratio, and they didn't. Instead, it's like the max is the same but it drains twice as fast (while taking just as long to fill).

If all the T3 wands follow that general pattern, this means my trick of dealing with moonlight needs by having two shifts that each sleep for half of the night is going to stop working, and I'll actually need to have one shift that is unsafe for dark mages to be on.

...which means I'll need to rotate all 20 or so of my custom schedules by a few hours. Ugh.

[Soul4hdwn]

Originally posted by Manxome:

Originally posted by Soul4hdwn:

Means the bar is smaller and thus need harder to maintain technically

I just got my first tier 3 wand and preliminary tests suggest it's better understood as a faster drain, not a reduced maximum.

Tier 2 air wand drains at 4%/hour normally, and recharges 46%/hour on stairs.

Tier 3 air wand drains at 8%/hour normally, and recharges at 42%/hour on stairs. (Which probably means that the recharge is internally +50%/hour but doesn't disable the drain, and so the net effect is 50% minus the normal drain rate, and that's why it's 4pp smaller on a T3 wand.)

It doesn't fill up faster. It only drains faster. Which means you need to spend more hours per day filling it up in order to break even.

The bar is, of course, visually smaller, because the visual size of all need bars is always based on how many hours it takes to drain. But if the only change were a smaller max, then the drain and fill rates would have kept the same ratio, and they didn't. Instead, it's like the max is the same but it drains twice as fast (while taking just as long to fill).

If all the T3 wands follow that general pattern, this means my trick of dealing with moonlight needs by having two shifts that each sleep for half of the night is going to stop working, and I'll actually need to have one shift that is unsafe for dark mages to be on.

...which means I'll need to rotate all 20 or so of my custom schedules by a few hours. Ugh.

But I definitely remember fire for example starts at 48 points worth and tier 3 is 24 points or something similar... Maybe 36 then 24 for certain elements

Well when it's percent based doesn't matter but still

[Eunomiac]

I've been running a necromancy-heavy build (because a lich is my spirit animal) and Manxome describes the only strategy I've needed to keep all my Dark mages at peak moonlight:

Originally posted by Manxome:

... schedule them to be awake at night and put at least 1 window/glass roof (or mana lantern) in each of your major rooms, then it should stay full on its own.

I created a group ("Nightshift") that keeps classes at the same hours but puts them to sleep during the day, and doing tasks at night. I have windows in every single room in my school (well, except 'transit' rooms like stairwells), and that's all I've ever needed.