Lost all Shard fragments after immediately abandoning a run on the Sealed Forest. I'm not happy about this design decision.

[MasterBlaster]

So first off I have over 1500 hours on this game. I am a fan. However I'm certain that making this complaint is going to cause a bunch of people to tell me that I need to just get good and its my own fault for not knowing the game mechanics beforehand. I was playing on Prestige 20 for the record, and I know this game almost inside and out, except for the Sealed Forest section.

I don't like this system, and I think it shouldn't have happened. That's my opinion. In previous games its never been an issue to restart if I make a serious mistake (ie forget I need to start with Amber on Prestige 20). You lose a tiny bit of time on the cycle, but it doesn't stop you from trying again.
On the Sealed Forest, there was NO WARNING at all that abandoning the Sealed Forest run would immediately end the ENTIRE cycle and force me to start it over from the beginning. Unless I'm completely blind, there's nowhere in the game that explicitly says that restarting a Sealed Forest run is not allowed, and abandoning the run will cause the ENTIRE CYCLE to end instantly.

This design decision has caused one of the worst fun-sucking motivation drains I've experienced in a city builder as of recently. Sorry, but that's how I feel. I spent weeks playing in my free time to build up to cracking another seal and ALL of that work was just flushed down the drain because the game didn't inform me that you're not allowed to restart a Sealed Forest run. I was really looking forward to cracking that seal. Now to be honest, I don't think I'm ever going to attempt it again.

Take this as you will. I know how gaming communities are so I'm expecting 99% of people to just say its my own fault and not give a crap. But maybe the right person hears it, who knows.

[Skallagrim]

There is clearly a warning saying you only get one chance at seal forest, win or lose. I noticed it playing the very first bronze seal.

I'm not near one to take a screenshot. Someone who is close to one can probably do it and point it out.

[AndreanDW]

It is not intended but you could do a backup of your save files before the run. RonEmpire did it before the no-cutting-trees-run, it took about 20 or 30 hours of game play to prepare this run.

[adrien_perleflamme]

There could be a specific warning about abandoning the settlement when it's a sealed forest, indeed (like "warning, you are about to abandon your entire cycle! Are you really sure this is your intent? "). Changing the button to "abandon the entire cycle" would be a good addition too. Doing anything beyond that (like allowing you to somehow restart it) would make it very easy to complete most sealed forests.

[fistleaf]

There is a warning that starting a sealed forest run will end the cycle. So obviously abandoning the sealed forest will end the cycle.

[adrien_perleflamme]

Originally posted by fistleaf:

There is a warning that starting a sealed forest run will end the cycle. So obviously abandoning the sealed forest will end the cycle.

Sure, but if it's something they do regularly for other settlements, it seems appropriate to expect such players will also end up abandoning their sealed forest settlement, without realising the full effect of it.

[Entropy Judge]

Originally posted by MasterBlaster:

... And yet, most of the responses were essentially the equivalent of "lol it's your own fault for not understanding the very subtle and unclear warning that was provided to you." In other words, get gud noob.

You're talking about three out of four people. Sure, this is not exactly the most active board in existence, but you're still not exactly talking about an overwhelming majority of people here.

I think you might be jumping the gun just a little bit here.

[Soho]

Almost 1000 hours here

I've got to the Adamantium Seal 3 times and failed it (got close one time... two other times were disasters)... not to mention several times getting about half-way to the seal and deciding to end the run rather than keep going because either behind on seal fragments, bad ongoing buffs/debuffs, or just generally feeling like it would be better to roll a start again and try to get a good start rather than push the rest of the way and not make it

It is for sure disappointing to lose the seal fragments on a failed run... but really, as far as the rewards go for turning in seal fragments, I have *tons* of all the campaign resources already (four or five thousand of the machinery/artifacts, and like 15k food or something like that) - so I am really only out a bunch of resources that I already have an over-abundance of those anyway

I never used the Forsaken Altar before I started trying for higher seals (I started using it when I was on Titanium) so that is probably how I ended up with such a huge stockpile. It seems like I am never going to run out of campaign resources so... whatever

I would not be surprised if devs code a warning pop-up though for this, it would not be a difficult thing to put in (warning! : this is your last chance to either use these seal fragments to attempt to close the seal, or exchange them for campaign resources... if you click 'yes' to proceed you will lose these seal fragments whether you complete the seal or not) ... though it only takes one or two times to figure out that you either attempt a seal, or exchange for resources, you obviously don't get to do both