Storm Seals - Too Few Fragments or Too Far Away

[Lord Zircon]

The seal mechanic is a little confusing, but I think I understand what I have to do: complete a tile that is adjacent to a Seal and have both enough fragments and enough time remaining before the next Blightstorm.

On my first few attempts, I was never able to reach a Seal with any time remaining. With the standard embark distance of 2, I would be able to do 4 settlements on the way to a Seal. Even if the 4th settlement was next to the Seal, there was no time left in the cycle and I was not given the option even though I had plenty of fragments.

After doing that a few times, I then learned about the Royal Resupply mechanic and figured I could use the wagon option to close the gap faster. On my second cycle with this approach, I was able to get to a Bronze Seal in 3 settlements, but then discovered I only had 2 of the 4 required fragments needed to do the Seal. I don't understand why one of my settlements awarded me no Seals, as in the previous cycles I was getting 2 for every settlement and often ending with way more than I needed for a Bronze Seal.

I'm now about 34 hours into the game and have not been able to do any Seals and expand my area of influence around the Citadel. Is this slow progression expected? Was this just some bad luck due to the variance in the gameplay? Is there some mechanic I'm not utilizing that makes this easier? Am I the only one who feels that the Seal feature constrains the gameplay too much, at least in the early stages?

[Lorska]

You gain more fragments on higher difficulties. If you just play pioneer you'll probably not make enough.

I'd guess your settlements just take too long. I'd say I'm a fairly average player and I take anything from 5 to 8 years usually, with the differences being due to difficulty of orders and the events I roll into.

Doing negative modifier maps is obviously fantastic to either gain more fragments or move faster.

[Tiler]

Hi all,
I feel there must be an adjustment in fragment payout.
I am about to complete the Prestige 15 seal. If I play the previous settlements on the estimated Prestigelevel i can not reach the Seal in time with enough fragments. On Prestige 9+ i need about 10 years to win a game (i know i have to improve my gameplay :) )
If i just tune it down to Prestige 7 i can win in about 6 years (because trade of course)! I will gain much more fragments if i push on lower Prestige in the same time.
Do not think this is the way it is ment to be?

greetings
Tiler
(sorry for mistakes, english isnt my native language ;) )

[AlexGK]

I think OP got something wrong. You are supposed to start the last settlement next to a seal when the cycle years are used up. Its an extra settlement, so to speak.
Also, as I understand it, seals are just an extra difficulty added to the game. You need to get familiar with the game and start playing prestige levels before going for the higher level seals. The last one probably after you are able to reliably finish P18-20 runs. They are not supposed to be easy.

[Tiler]

i get it that it is an increasment of difficulty to forge the seals.
But there has to be an adjustment in the difficulty/win ratio in my opinion.
Why should i play P15 games backtoback if i get more seals for P7 games? I have a 4 wins for P7 but just 2 wins for P10+ in the same ammount of cycle time.
It is not the problem for me to win P15 games, its the ammount of time. Sure.... gitgood and win P15 @ 6 years, but there is no reason at all. Last two settlements are timeless and so there is no problem at all for me coming to the end. Just personal pride perhaps ;)

greets

[Hariman]

I've found spamming low prestige settlements lets me finish quickly consistently, so my current attempt at the Prestige 15 seal goes south from the city, around a little to the east, then goes northwest and noodles around a little to buy time and get more seals.

My settlements on low prestige are typically taking 5 years (maybe 6, sometimes 4), so I have just enough time to get there.

Fortunately, I got the gambling event, so I should be a little ahead on fragments by the time I get there, so yay leeway.

The hard part is winning the higher prestige settlements near the end of the run.

Also... not a lot of modifiers on the path I took, so not a lot of bonus embarkation points yet.

[Lord Zircon]

I've been playing on Pioneer to learn the fundamentals of the game, so I'm not looking for endgame feedback.

My most recent run, I completed two settlements in 6 years each and arrived next to a Bronze Seal with 4 Seal fragments and 20 years remaining in the current Cycle. I completed this tile adjacent to the Seal also in 6 years like the others. When I returned to the world map, it showed that I only had 2 Seal fragments (not 4 like I had before or 6 counting the 2 I should have gotten for completing the tile) and the Cycle bar was automatically filled, giving me no option other than to start the next cycle.

I'm clearly missing something, and the game isn't conveying what that is. All it says when you hover over a Seal is that you need to embark with 4 Seal fragments to seal it. For multiple cycles now I have arrived next to the Seals expecting these conditions to be met based on my previous progress in the cycle, and yet time and seal fragments just disappear every time I reach one.

[Lorska]

That's kinda sounds bugged because this should happen:
- You're unable to select a tile next to the seal unless you have the required seal fragments
- starting a seal map reduces your seal fragments by the amount required and skips to the end of the cycle

The first seal should require 5 seals not 4. At least it should if I remember correctly (I believe the expected thing is to play a negative map modifier for the extra fragments if you're just playing on pioneer)

I would strongly recommend to start playing on higher difficulties btw. You are not gonna learn much more on that difficulty. If anything, if you're staying too long on the lower difficulties and intend to go higher then you will have to unlearn a lot of stuff.
I would personally recommend playing on veteran to learn things, due to 3 reasons:
1) access to the blightrot mechanic
2) faster unlock speed to be introduced to other important features
3) decent challenge as a new player without being overwhelming, you can make mistakes without it costing you the run (if you are able to win the games in the time you said this sounds like the perfect difficulty level for you tbh).

Imo as a casual player the perfect power curve is pioneer (learn basics) > veteran (exploring strategies) > prestige 1 (test what you learned) > prestige 4 (best reward/difficulty ratio) > anything higher if you seek more difficulty

[Lord Zircon]

The settlement tiles have a minimum difficulty displayed, so I figured the minimum difficulty would increase as I moved further away from the Citadel. I figured that was the implicit difficulty curve intended by the developers.

But if I can't figure out how the Seals work, I can't access any biomes outside the 6-tile radius starting area around the Citadel, and its starting to get pretty old playing the same few biomes over and over again regardless of difficulty.

[Lorska]

Those biomes do stay the same, they are not tied to the distance.
The one thing that does increase with distance is the probability of more difficult modifiers, though all modifiers may appear anywhere, the chance is just higher.

You can for sure play on just the minimum difficulty for your current seal. Did you maybe already unlock a seal and are accidentally picking the easier one each time? The highest difficulty seal is always the one you have to unlock, the lower one simply exists for some extra resources.

Try this of you really are on your first seal:
Find a negative modifier in the direction of one of the seals.
Win that settlement and collect the extra fragments.
Then proceed towards the seal you want to break and finish the sealed map.

Edit:
Do NOT go back in difficulty each cycle. You aren't supposed to increase difficulty as you get further away from the city DURING a cycle, think of the seal minimum difficulty as the minimum difficulty for every settlement during that cycle. Otherwise you're gonna torpedo your chances to gain enough fragments.

[el Darkness]

Originally posted by Lord Zircon:

My most recent run, I completed two settlements in 6 years each and arrived next to a Bronze Seal with 4 Seal fragments and 20 years remaining in the current Cycle. I completed this tile adjacent to the Seal also in 6 years like the others. When I returned to the world map, it showed that I only had 2 Seal fragments (not 4 like I had before or 6 counting the 2 I should have gotten for completing the tile) and the Cycle bar was automatically filled, giving me no option other than to start the next cycle.

It seems you have succesfully reforged the seal, although I do not know why you had 2 Fragments after doing it, since first Seal needs 4. And reforging the seal ends your current cycle, storm come immediately.

Perhaps you got 2 Fragments for beating the Seal map? That would explain why you ended up with 2 Fragments istead of 0.

[vindicar]

Originally posted by Lord Zircon:

I've been playing on Pioneer to learn the fundamentals of the game, so I'm not looking for endgame feedback.

My most recent run, I completed two settlements in 6 years each and arrived next to a Bronze Seal with 4 Seal fragments and 20 years remaining in the current Cycle. I completed this tile adjacent to the Seal also in 6 years like the others. When I returned to the world map, it showed that I only had 2 Seal fragments (not 4 like I had before or 6 counting the 2 I should have gotten for completing the tile) and the Cycle bar was automatically filled, giving me no option other than to start the next cycle.

I'm clearly missing something, and the game isn't conveying what that is. All it says when you hover over a Seal is that you need to embark with 4 Seal fragments to seal it. For multiple cycles now I have arrived next to the Seals expecting these conditions to be met based on my previous progress in the cycle, and yet time and seal fragments just disappear every time I reach one.

I believe there is a tooltip that says that merely by settling next to a Seal you call the Blightstorm early, regardless of the cycle time left.
You should be aiming it so you run out of Cycle time while within travel range of the Seal. Takes a bit to get it right, but for the Lead seals I managed to do a figure-of-eight on the map a couple of times and still do it - just because I was hitting tiles with negative modifies, got Royal Resupply and picked extra travel distance or extra seal fragments as needed.

[Yasahi]

Originally posted by vindicar:

I believe there is a tooltip that says that merely by settling next to a Seal you call the Blightstorm early, regardless of the cycle time left.

Yup, there's one.

If you're planning to embark into a Sealed Forest tile, there is an orange marker next to the Embark button when you're choosing your caravan and embarkation bonuses. It's the tooltip that tells the player how the cycle will end because they're embarking into the Sealed Forest.

[Clawyer]

While it's true that there is the orange exclamation mark hint, it might be better to show a "You are skipping the rest of your cycle!" confirmation dialog that can be disabled for the future?
Maybe some more tutorialization regarding the seals would also be a good idea.

[Lord Zircon]

So I just took a look at the world map again, and I noticed that the two Bronze Seals have a check mark next to the Consequences box (even though its grayed out for some reason) and I can see that I have more time in the Cycle now. I guess the reason why it took the fragments was because it actually completed the Seal? There was no communication of this from the game following the settlement completion and so I had no idea I had actually succeeded.

It looks like I wasn't missing anything other than confirmation I had done the Seals. I understand the game is in early access still, so its not the end of the world.

[Star]

i find the whole seal thing rather confusing and have a similar issue to the main poster, where I reached a seal with enough fragments completed the map but have no idea if I was successful.

I thought my map would expand out to that seal to show I had reached it? I feel I misunderstood that part.

Is there anyway to tell if I have completed a seal successfully?