Plague of Darkness

[doingwork]

I gotta say Plague of Darkness is a completely unfun mechanic compared to the others. It feels like there is 0 counterplay. 100% longer storm and can't sacrifice? You are guaranteed to lose 3-4 villagers minimum, theres no way to get resolve to a decent level, especially early on in the run.

The other plagues you can deal with, darkness just feels cheap and really is not a fun mechanic. I feel something like "sacrificing burns 50% fast" or something would be fine, but its 10x worse than the other plagues currently IMO.

[mostly willing]

what level of difficulty are you playing on? +100% storm duration is one of the Prestige modifiers, so anyone who plays at p15 or higher has 4 min storms by default. 6 mins with Plague of Darkness. it's fine. I actually found it easier than other plagues. It only requires you to be stable going into the storm, which is entirely doable most of the time.

[doingwork]

Usually low prestige, but it applied when I was starting out too on the lower difficulties. The longer storm is whatever but I dont get how you handle the massive resolve loss without the ability to sacrifice. I mean, 2nd year is like just starting to get and handle on things and boom -15 to resolve, cant remove woodcutters to lower either since its the seal forest. All 3 races in the deep negatives, 0 counterplay.

The other plagues are laughable in comparison from my experience, reduce production speed? Move slower off roads I think? I can't really remember them as they weren't very gamechanging so far.

[mostly willing]

Originally posted by doingwork:

The longer storm is whatever but I dont get how you handle the massive resolve loss without the ability to sacrifice. I mean, 2nd year is like just starting to get and handle on things and boom -15 to resolve, cant remove woodcutters to lower either since its the seal forest. All 3 races in the deep negatives, 0 counterplay.

if you are at -15 during storm you are ♥♥♥♥♥♥. by the time it gets to that point you've already lost. there is no way to go into year 2 storm at -15 without major mistakes. the counterplay takes place before you get there. sounds to me like you either took on too many villagers, were working on a bad event when you should have put it off, or cut way too many trees, or all at the same time. you should be aiming to keep your settlement sustainable without sacrificing. again, at higher prestige it's almost impossible to sacrifice away the storm because 1) the storm is 4 mins long by default and 2) sacrificing is just way too expensive. sacrificing at lower difficulties is a crutch. no shame if you use it, but you don't want to ever rely on it.

[doingwork]

I mean, my normal strat is to burn a ton of wood/coal (kiln is OP) every storm. With a temple its very good ofc. Its not unsual to see like -20 during a storm b4 I start sacrificing.

I have ~60 hours and have yet to lose (or get close to losing really) any game. Curse of darkness just sucks, its the only thing that makes the game unfun.

[mostly willing]

Originally posted by doingwork:

Curse of darkness just sucks, its the only thing that makes the game unfun.

curse of darkness is only an issue if you over rely on sacrificing. it is not an issue whatsoever if you have a sustainable settlement.
you do you, of course, but you are playing suboptimally. you are going to heavily readjust if you decide to up the difficulty. your playstyle is heavily dependent on 1) not getting the no sacrificing during storm modifier 2) getting the kiln BP/finding a kiln ruin 3) wasting a lot of labor and resources 4) having a good plank recipe or one of the legendary +wood perks. 1, 2, and 4 are not guaranteed. 3 just makes all of your settlements inefficient - you are wasting tons of resources and labor instead of managing hostility properly (and spending resources and labor elsewhere). 2 also makes the game boring imo. I don't want to have a kiln in every game. AtS is at its best when you have to improvise and scrape by. pulling a kiln and siphoning 20% of your available labor to sustain yourself through every storm is not fun in my book. but that's subjective.

[Hariman]

It's better to focus on building resolve faster and being resilient enough to never need to sacrifice at all, or only need to sacrifice for a minute or two at most.

An early focus complex foods and maybe building species housing, or possibly clothing depending on species.

Even the field kitchen can work, if you get it going fast enough.

I've honestly found it more efficient to focus complex food and such before/at the same time as building materials.

[Clawyer]

I do not know when you get hit with the longer storm but if you rely on sacrificing in all games you will get into serious trouble in the higher difficulties.

In a game with difficulty level Viceroy and up you can survive the first 2 storms without sacrifices by building housing for everybody, add decorations to get your hearth to level 1 and putting a lizard to work in the hearth for the global +1 resolve modifier. After that you should have some kind of complex food production up and running.

Remove your woodcutters during the storm. There is a button you can click to remove them all or right click to do so one at a time.

If you open a large glade on the opposite side of where your hearth is located in the starting glade you can usually build a second hearth, which slightly reduces hostility and gives you another +2 global resolve at level 1. You just have to make sure to have enough fuel for it, but in the worst case you can only staff it during the storm (or slightly before the storm so the fire burns already).

Be aware of glade events that are still active when you enter the storm season! If you trigger an event too late it might be better to just let the negative consequence happen than to have another -6 or -10 to resolve active when the storm begins.

If you can already see that the next storm is going to hit you hard, call a trader and buy all the complex food and clothes you cannot produce on your own.

If you have rainwater available, connect buildings and put workers with the lowest base resolve in it, boosting their resolve with the right rainpunk button. +10 on two workers will make a difference as long as you don't have 20+ villagers from that species.

Try to get some advances building materials and build species specific housing if you can afford it, the houses for Harpies can be built relatively easy as they only require you to have some fabric. Materials for the other species housing can be bought from traders if you lack materials and/or production buildings.

There are more ways to generate resolve, be it cornerstones, services or event rewards, but those will not be helpful in the early game.