Why are you not leveraging EVERYTHING the game gives you to control the house?

[PersonalC0ffee]

There is so so so MUCH the game gives you to control the house, make it bend to your whims.

Here's some madness;

Raise your coins and stars through the various methods high as you can. Use those same coins, launder them to gems. Draft the study. Use your 60+ gems to reroll rooms. Get the showroom, buy the emerald bracelet or compass both are pretty good but bracelet+study, is insane because every gem is now a reroll up to 8 of course but then you can burn stars if you have over 50 and you should! If you have the compass or the dancer blessing, you now can also use gems to rotate rooms. 1 coin at the shrine for 3 days of always being able to rotate rooms.

Can't get shops? Do the chess board there's a power there that will facilitate that.
Can't do the chess board? Use the conservatory, find the clues.
Can't find the conservatory, then explore and draft better.

By days 50-100 you should have figured out where conservatory is by then. I really do feel if you're filling your house and seeing lots of rooms, you should have found the clues that lead to Conservatory by then.

That room is a game changer. There's a reason they make it so easy to find.

Rerolls are seriously THE best thing in the game, next to the showroom item combos and room synergies.

Do not under estimate rerolls.

[Minneyar]

Because it takes dozens of hours of playing the game to get to the point where you've figured all of that out (unless you're reading spoilers), and a lot of people who are frustrated will quit before they get that far.

[Silyon]

The thing is, all of the above depend on getting large amounts of resources to begin with and specific rooms. Which is a late-game project and completely unhelpful to people that are still stuck in the early game. Same deal with the Chess puzzle and it's powers, which requires solving several "softball" or "easy" puzzles to even access and demands drafting extremely specific rooms in order to properly utilize.

There are people stuck on Ranks 2-3, burning through day after day because they don't understand that doorways themselves are a resource you need to keep track of, how to collect Keys and Gems, and how to improvise progression out of objectively poor draws. Telling these people about all these mid-lategame tricks to make drafting easier not only doesn't help, it's borderline taunting.

Keep the advice simple. Pay attention to how the rooms are oriented on the map, don't waste rooms with doors when a dead-end provides the same connectivity in your draft, stop spending your keys and gems early in the day if you can help it, don't be shy about taking a red room and learn ways to deal with the downsides of the red rooms, and memorize what rooms have a good chance of giving you extra "unmentioned" resources, like the Guest Bedroom.

[Jaunty]

Agreed that the game actually gives you significant power over the RNG, but if you actually pay attention to the criticism that people with serious amounts of playtime in the game communicate, the issues being voiced are:

1. It takes serious amounts of time to uncover what these mechanisms are, which on its own is arguably most of the fun of playing but undercut by the fact that
   
2. Once you have uncovered those mechanisms, enacting the mechanisms themselves in order to mitigate the RNG is (2.a) itself subject to RNG, and (2.b) a grindy process that distracts and detracts from actually interacting with the main puzzles of the game

By way of example:

• Placing and then re-locating your foundation. When you first learn of it, it is possible if not probable that your placement is sub-optimal, taking something that is a key feature of the game and making it into something that adds additional hurdles to the normal progression of the game. Correcting this is possible, but first requires knowledge of a number of hidden systems and then an understanding of how they must be used to intersect in a way that forces this outcome. Having understood all of that, it then requires a certain amount of RNG to pull of.
  
• Mitigating gold issues through manipulation of allowance. Again, more than plausible and actually pretty easy once you are exposed to a few of the systems by which you can do this—but once you have figured out what to do, actually doing it requires you perform a large number of runs each of which are reliant on some amount of RNG.

[Silyon]

Originally posted by Jaunty:

Agreed that the game actually gives you significant power over the RNG, but if you actually pay attention to the criticism that people with serious amounts of playtime in the game communicate, the issues being voiced are:

1. It takes serious amounts of time to uncover what these mechanisms are, which on its own is arguably most of the fun of playing but undercut by the fact that
   
2. Once you have uncovered those mechanisms, enacting the mechanisms themselves in order to mitigate the RNG is (2.a) itself subject to RNG, and (2.b) a grindy process that distracts and detracts from actually interacting with the main puzzles of the game

This is the other point, yes. Anything that involves placing a particular room is inherently dependant on RNG and therefore not reliable. The only thing that mitigates this is knowlege of multiple instances of the same method or effect. The Study as an example, it is obviously one of the best rooms in the game but is not the only means of aggressively rerolling rooms to get what you want. Classrooms, the Drawing room, and any method that gets you Dice are other ways of going after resources, all of which are equally early-game and considerably cheaper than the Study in return for being more restrictive.

There are multiple ways to do everything in the game, such that any given run has pretty good odds of offering at least one way of leveraging a thing you need. Being able to recognize the opportunity for what it is when it's presented (the seam if you will) and take advantage of it is the trick to leveraging the game's inherent RNG against it and control the house.

[.]

if op could read he would be very upset

[PersonalC0ffee]

Originally posted by Silyon:

The thing is, all of the above depend on getting large amounts of resources to begin with and specific rooms. Which is a late-game project and completely unhelpful to people that are still stuck in the early game. Same deal with the Chess puzzle and it's powers, which requires solving several "softball" or "easy" puzzles to even access and demands drafting extremely specific rooms in order to properly utilize.

There are people stuck on Ranks 2-3, burning through day after day because they don't understand that doorways themselves are a resource you need to keep track of, how to collect Keys and Gems, and how to improvise progression out of objectively poor draws. Telling these people about all these mid-lategame tricks to make drafting easier not only doesn't help, it's borderline taunting.

Keep the advice simple. Pay attention to how the rooms are oriented on the map, don't waste rooms with doors when a dead-end provides the same connectivity in your draft, stop spending your keys and gems early in the day if you can help it, don't be shy about taking a red room and learn ways to deal with the downsides of the red rooms, and memorize what rooms have a good chance of giving you extra "unmentioned" resources, like the Guest Bedroom.

So basically bad at drafting. Also haven't fully grasped the mechanics of the game yet.

I think that's what it is, they don't want to learn by failing and they would rather just point to the rng instead of own up to their mistakes and failures and use it as a teaching moment to get better.

[PersonalC0ffee]

Originally posted by Minneyar:

Because it takes dozens of hours of playing the game to get to the point where you've figured all of that out (unless you're reading spoilers), and a lot of people who are frustrated will quit before they get that far.

There's a good criticism to be said here that this is a short coming of the game.

It simply doesn't tell you this stuff exists, much like a game from the classic era. (which is the feel they were going for, like Myst.) You're meant to dive in, figure it out, and put it together.

Most modern games today hold the player's hand and this game instead will grab it and kick you in the nuts.

[Shrub]

You can also just have poor luck, even with reset abuse and control. I completely understand why some people are struggling as I have cursed luck with anything RNG related. Not even Goblin-Slayer tactics can save me in my hell.

I can consistently fill the entire house with rooms and not get freezer or other 'key' rooms despite investing in as many means to abuse the game and minimize RNG. Drives me insane. Ballerina blessing, abusing my increased security/breaker room rarities, gem-focused plan upgrades and some re-rolls thrown in, honing into draft rooms... But what do you do when the game spits in your face? When your rerolls are garbage and your rotations are just a few steps forward in prayer? I just don't have enough resources to maximize my control as I'd like, and to get them I need more resources. At least I have time.

The one time I drafted freezer and froze my account at 40 coin in prep to double my money, I accidentally pressed Alt+Tildy+Q which apparently these super-close keys are the Windows equivalent of ALT+F4 but in PopOS. My bad-luck is diverse and mysterious.

For every 1 person that goes to RNG heaven, many more fall down... Still loving the experience even if it takes a few hours before I can interact with more puzzles.

[PersonalC0ffee]

Originally posted by Shrub:

You can also just have poor luck, even with reset abuse and control. I completely understand why some people are struggling as I have cursed luck with anything RNG related. Not even Goblin-Slayer tactics can save me in my hell.

I can consistently fill the entire house with rooms and not get freezer or other 'key' rooms despite investing in as many means to abuse the game and minimize RNG. Drives me insane. Ballerina blessing, abusing my increased security/breaker room rarities, gem-focused plan upgrades and some re-rolls thrown in, honing into draft rooms... But what do you do when the game spits in your face? When your rerolls are garbage and your rotations are just a few steps forward in prayer? I just don't have enough resources to maximize my control as I'd like, and to get them I need more resources. At least I have time.

The one time I drafted freezer and froze my account at 40 coin in prep to double my money, I accidentally pressed Alt+Tildy+Q which apparently these super-close keys are the Windows equivalent of ALT+F4 but in PopOS. My bad-luck is diverse and mysterious.

For every 1 person that goes to RNG heaven, many more fall down... Still loving the experience even if it takes a few hours before I can interact with more puzzles.

Freezer goes into cool down for 24 hours in case you didn't know that. I assume that's an in-game day but I'm unsure. Freezer is also more likely to appear if you have drafted the Solarium.

As for what to do, if you haven't already analyze your runs and see where you made mistakes. Other than that, that's the failure state. You can do everything right and still get screwed by rng. Yes, it does happen but not near as much as detractors would have people believe. But at least you are being humble about it. Most players aren't doing what we are. They just immediately hit a wall and complain about rng.

I don't go to rng heaven, never have. I just have a very good strategy to dealing with the house, one that I shared in my over 100 hours of the game. Nearly every single day I employ this strategy. Is it ultimate luck? No, I do not think so else I should gamble like no tomorrow.

No, I think it is based on a very solid understanding of what to do and when to do it. I would say I nuke maybe 1 in 20 runs due to the game actually screwing me over from poor rng. The latest example got a locked door and a keycard door in the conference room on rank 2. I had not yet drafted the nook and I instead had prioritized workshop, utility, study, and conservatory on rank 1 along with a sprinkling of rooms on rank 2.

I would say I didn't make a mistake there, but I clearly did. If I would have put in the nook and it did show up during rank 1, that wouldn't have happened.

WTH is PopOS?

[Shrub]

PopOS is a Linux distro. :)

I do analyze my runs though, I'm the kind of person to record and analyze my own footage because I love self-improvement. I know it's partially tool access and game knowledge, so we gettin' there, but I assure you I'm a very unlucky person as well. RNG hell has a reserved cardboard-box home with my name misspelled on it.

I'm aware of the cool-down although I'm unsure if it's referring to drafting it or the mechanics of the room itself (i.e, no shelf-items). I generally do light-rerolls if I can in dead-ends and reroll more forcefully if it never appears in my drafts by ranks 7+, disregarding advancement for control. No dice. Or rather, I run out lol.

By mid-mansion I usually have 20+ gems, lots of keys and prepared for further security by-pass, but often rarely coin unfortunately. If you have spoiler-less tips for collecting them a bit better in this early game, that'd be awesome! I made a relevant post if you haven't seen it regarding a maybe work-around.

Back to the dreaded room though, I see it once every 5 runs maybe but I rarely have the coins to utilize it efficiently, even if I place it early, ignore it, and press on. I generally just wander and solve other puzzles while I wait for this set-up. Get floor-plan upgrades, find new drafts, etc... Still decently early @25 hours so I don't have full tool access and still exploring areas of the estate with 3/...4? perms unlocked.

It's not just that room though, I've been trying to drain a teeeeensy bit of the reservoir for days now but I can never draft the pump room either... One time I even drafted the pool as my first or second room and never found it across every tile. Can't wait to find it with my damn wrench >:(

[PersonalC0ffee]

Originally posted by Shrub:

PopOS is a Linux distro. :)

I do analyze my runs though, I'm the kind of person to record and analyze my own footage because I love self-improvement. I know it's partially tool access and game knowledge, so we gettin' there, but I assure you I'm a very unlucky person as well. RNG hell has a reserved cardboard-box home with my name misspelled on it.

I'm aware of the cool-down although I'm unsure if it's referring to drafting it or the mechanics of the room itself (i.e, no shelf-items). I generally do light-rerolls if I can in dead-ends and reroll more forcefully if it never appears in my drafts by ranks 7+, disregarding advancement for control. No dice. Or rather, I run out lol.

By mid-mansion I usually have 20+ gems, lots of keys and prepared for further security by-pass, but often rarely coin unfortunately. If you have spoiler-less tips for collecting them a bit better in this early game, that'd be awesome! I made a relevant post if you haven't seen it regarding a maybe work-around.

Back to the dreaded room though, I see it once every 5 runs maybe but I rarely have the coins to utilize it efficiently, even if I place it early, ignore it, and press on. I generally just wander and solve other puzzles while I wait for this set-up. Get floor-plan upgrades, find new drafts, etc... Still decently early @25 hours so I don't have full tool access and still exploring areas of the estate with 3/...4? perms unlocked.

It's not just that room though, I've been trying to drain a teeeeensy bit of the reservoir for days now but I can never draft the pump room either... One time I even drafted the pool as my first or second room and never found it across every tile. Can't wait to find it with my damn wrench >:(

It is drafting it. It will not show up for 24 hours. There might be a way around it but I don't know how.

See, you get it. You're the most reasonable person I've seen on here that has said something about rng. You definitely show you have the game on lock down and you are analyzing your mistakes and failures. This is how you improve.

Most players aren't doing that though, they hit the wall and then they complain.

I respect you for doing this and I think we could actually be friends. I feel you get me.

AS for tips on how to get coins faster in the early game? There is a certain combo item that can help you. But really you just want to start building up your allowance.

I don't know how much you want me to say so I won't say much.

I will shoot you friend request though.