Need help... What strategy do you use?

[Silly Clown]

As the title says, I'm confused on the optimal playstyle for this game. All of this info is based on normal difficulty + Adventurer character.

As it is, the only time you really need to hustle to the end is when you reach the height where Oxygen Mode activates.

1st run - Use your health pool... Tank through the bad events with your health. I thought this was an untapped resource, but when I got to the second mountain there was no meaningful way of earning back more health than you lost to make this a long term strategy.

2nd run - Stock up on supplies, zig zag to as much events before Oxygen Mode... however you run the issue of running out of energy too often on your way to the top. This strategy chips away at your health overtime by exposing yourself to more ice/unstable tile events + low energy events due to the amount of extra tiles you end up covering.

There's a third strategy which is equipment shuffling, but this is RNG dependant, and on my 2nd run only found 2 gloves for gear by the time I got halfway up the second mountain. I also found this playstyle, during my 1st run, to be the most annoying having to constantly open the menu for every conceivable tile.


I'm on the easiest difficulty and I can't get past the second mountain. I'm either doing something wrong or there is something fundamentally unbalanced in this game's numbers... That or bad RNG.


**** Nevermind, I realized that I was playing the game wrong this whole time and finally beat the game. You have to MANUALLY PICK EACH TILE to travel on if you want to succeed in this game. I was letting auto pathing do the job, which was getting me killed.

My winning strategy
1. Journalist - Has the best starting skill in the game which lets you ignore both weather and danger tiles. Best used for night exploration with bad weather.
2. Rush consumable specialization + gain sanity on consumable use. This perk lets you ignore herbs (freeing inventory) and easily maintain the sanity bar at the same time.
3. Energy saving passive + Hiking stick + 2 types of boots = Most efficient energy saving. I was on the 3rd mountain and was able to climb for 2 days straight thanks to this fuel economy build.
BONUS. If you don't have an oxygen tank by the time you tackle the DEATH ZONE... your chances of survival is very slim. This is the most RNG reliant part of the run.

[Zelgabunny]

I just beat the 3rd mountain on my first play through, haven't died yet. The events are like enemies in rpgs, you want to farm them for experience, but you still need to make the right decisions to make them worth it. The descriptions give clues if an event will have a good or bad ending depending on your decision, but its generally better to try your luck on everything to see what is possible, then learn from it. Performing any action at an event will at least get you experience (pretty sure) which is very useful to get new skills/abilities. The first mountain is especially important to gather as many resources as you can so you can focus on climbing more in the later mountains, but don't go exploring every single tile there is, some paths to an event just aren't worth the energy needed.

[Mr. Salmon]

The event mastery skill tree has the "meditate" skill which passes time, gives you xp and raises some stats (including health!! but never oxygen)

[Shammy]

Originally posted by Boooopies:

You have to MANUALLY PICK EACH TILE to travel on if you want to succeed in this game. I was letting auto pathing do the job, which was getting me killed.

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Does Auto-pathing expend more energy, etc., or did you make more mistakes by blindly following it? Do you mean one MUST select tiles 1 by 1? Thank you!

[DKATyler]

Auto-pathing chooses the most time-efficient route. This route is usually not the most energy efficient.

[Silly Clown]

Originally posted by Shammy:

Originally posted by Boooopies:

You have to MANUALLY PICK EACH TILE to travel on if you want to succeed in this game. I was letting auto pathing do the job, which was getting me killed.

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Does Auto-pathing expend more energy, etc., or did you make more mistakes by blindly following it? Do you mean one MUST select tiles 1 by 1? Thank you!

I was letting auto pathing do the job on my first few runs, which turned out was getting me killed. Zig-zagging up a set of stair-formed tiles (6 tiles) is much more energy efficient than climbing up a tile 5 tiles high (2 tiles). Like-wise, it is also advisable to avoid risky tiles by manually going around the tile.

[Maltavius]

Originally posted by DKATyler:

Auto-pathing chooses the most time-efficient route. This route is usually not the most energy efficient.

The game should make this ABSOLUTLEY CLEAR...
Also it's really hard to differenciate between different costs when it's only a red bar and not a number.

[packrat4]

Originally posted by Maltavius:

Originally posted by DKATyler:

Auto-pathing chooses the most time-efficient route. This route is usually not the most energy efficient.

The game should make this ABSOLUTLEY CLEAR...
Also it's really hard to differenciate between different costs when it's only a red bar and not a number.

It's mountain-climbing. That steeper ascents cost more energy should be completely obvious.

I wouldn't want to see floating numbers everywhere, turning the whole thing into a math problem. You have to eyeball it in real life, and that's exactly what the game expects of you. Every hex must be chosen carefully, every step considered. It's a good system.

[Maltavius]

Originally posted by packrat4:

Originally posted by Maltavius:

The game should make this ABSOLUTLEY CLEAR...
Also it's really hard to differenciate between different costs when it's only a red bar and not a number.

It's mountain-climbing. That steeper ascents cost more energy should be completely obvious.

I wouldn't want to see floating numbers everywhere, turning the whole thing into a math problem. You have to eyeball it in real life, and that's exactly what the game expects of you. Every hex must be chosen carefully, every step considered. It's a good system.

Yeah if it told me about it.
No instead you light up a green path for me to follow. It turns red when bad stuff happens... but that's not true, it should be orange.
But I guess when there's not much of a game when the A* algorithm can do the game for you.

[packrat4]

But it can't do the game for you, because the highlighted path is optimizing shortest time of ascent only and where along it one of your attributes will run out, and not taking into account whether you have ways to boost those attributes. Only the player can know that, and therein lies the game.

[Maltavius]

Originally posted by packrat4:

But it can't do the game for you, because the highlighted path is optimizing shortest time of ascent only and where along it one of your attributes will run out, and not taking into account whether you have ways to boost those attributes. Only the player can know that, and therein lies the game.

As It is now it can't yes, but it could easily pick the best path.
Yeah but that's the thing isn't it. The game knows that better than I do.
It knows if it's going to give me oxygen or not, if it's going to give me warmth or health.

[DKATyler]

Originally posted by Maltavius:

Originally posted by DKATyler:

Auto-pathing chooses the most time-efficient route. This route is usually not the most energy efficient.

The game should make this ABSOLUTLEY CLEAR...
Also it's really hard to differenciate between different costs when it's only a red bar and not a number.

Reading your other posts I think what you're wanting is a way to toggle the pathing to "Most Energy Efficient" which might be relatively easy to do for the devs depending on how the time pathing is calculated.

There's 4 gauges but really only *2* constraints: Time & Energy. Sanity/Temp/Oxy all tick by the hour when moving or when in events/resting.

[packrat4]

Originally posted by Maltavius:

Yeah but that's the thing isn't it. The game knows that better than I do.
It knows if it's going to give me oxygen or not, if it's going to give me warmth or health.

Not if what you get is randomly triggered when you open the dialogue — and certainly it doesn't know which of the two options you'll choose.

Not sure why it matters. I wouldn't want a foolproof path automatically provided to race up the mountain anyway -- there's no game at that point, except trying to bank against random events. I'd prefer the paths turned off altogether before doing that. You don't get them in real life.

[Mr. Salmon]

after playing some more another tip is to try and spend a lot of time below the death zone, just farming events, go for event mastery to boost gains

[Maltavius]

Originally posted by packrat4:

Originally posted by Maltavius:

Yeah but that's the thing isn't it. The game knows that better than I do.
It knows if it's going to give me oxygen or not, if it's going to give me warmth or health.

Not if what you get is randomly triggered when you open the dialogue — and certainly it doesn't know which of the two options you'll choose.

Not sure why it matters. I wouldn't want a foolproof path automatically provided to race up the mountain anyway -- there's no game at that point, except trying to bank against random events. I'd prefer the paths turned off altogether before doing that. You don't get them in real life.

I don't want a foolproof path either, but I want a game that generates a level that is actually completable, walking around below 6000 meters for a few weeks seems hardly what the game is about... but anyways.
I refunded the game. Not for me apparently.

[Shammy]

Originally posted by Boooopies:

Originally posted by Shammy:

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Does Auto-pathing expend more energy, etc., or did you make more mistakes by blindly following it? Do you mean one MUST select tiles 1 by 1? Thank you!

I was letting auto pathing do the job on my first few runs, which turned out was getting me killed. Zig-zagging up a set of stair-formed tiles (6 tiles) is much more energy efficient than climbing up a tile 5 tiles high (2 tiles). Like-wise, it is also advisable to avoid risky tiles by manually going around the tile.

Thanks for the explanation. I also saw that in play after watching some vids of game-play. Interesting game.