Completed easily the game with using less than half the mechanics

[Waterpie]

Just completed the game super easily.
I maxed 1 relationship and shop and did all tier 6 potions.
Skipped at least 10 days too.
It was challenging for the first 10 days, then I almost always had the competition potions first day of the week.
I never played demo or watched tutorials, this is not to flex or anything, I just wish for devs to see this and maybe tweak with the mechanics of the game.
It can also be used as an easy guide to complete the game by avoiding losing time and money in useless functionalities.


Here are the mechanics I never used:

- Gardening
- Custom orders
- Marketing (Even if I should have I think)
- Enchantments
- Muktuk upgrades


Mechanics I almost never used:

- Deck builder (swapped 4 cards in the first days)
- Quinn's shop (only bought twice to make things faster in late game, I expanded as much as possible tho)
- Carpenter (only 3 cauldrons and 3 shelves needed, I max upgraded for achievement)


What I used religiously:

- Adventuring
- Heroes guild
- Salt & Pepper
- Brewing
- Selling

[Kiru]

Interesting.

Curious how you "almost never used" Quinn's shop. I'm intrigued.

I also find Custom Orders to be a mindless distraction.
I take them for my friends if I want the relationship boost, but I tell everyone else to piss off. It's not worth my time.

[Lexi]

Because of the way the game is designed (Eg make the three contest potions, nothing else matters) lots of those systems get ignored. Plus, gold is worthless because of it. Expanding the shop is worthless. Why even SELL potions? You're not trying to make money here, you're trying to win the contest. In fact, you're better off making the potions for that and then focusing on relationships for better cards.

The game seriously needs a mode that scraps the contest, its the core issue with making the game play so weirdly out of sync with what it wants to be (It wants to be a shop sim, but its not, as becoming a good potion shop isn't what you want to do, you want three potions for the contest and a good card hand.)

The whole contest system being what you use to pay off debt really does make any of the POTION SELLING stuff pointless. Marketing? Who cares, traits? Who cares. Better shelves? 5% more gold from potion selling? It doesn't matter in the slightest.

[Rat]

I managed to complete the game without even launching. I've also never spoken to a women in real life.

9/10 IGN

[Waterpie]

Originally posted by Kiru:

Interesting.

Curious how you "almost never used" Quinn's shop. I'm intrigued.

I also find Custom Orders to be a mindless distraction.
I take them for my friends if I want the relationship boost, but I tell everyone else to piss off. It's not worth my time.

Only used Quinn's shop day 31 and 41 so I can make the contest's potions first day of the week.
I wasn't aware about the relationship boost when you take an order, the sole reason I didn't take any order was because I didn't want to bother with traits.

[Waterpie]

Originally posted by Lexi:

Because of the way the game is designed (Eg make the three contest potions, nothing else matters) lots of those systems get ignored. Plus, gold is worthless because of it. Expanding the shop is worthless. Why even SELL potions? You're not trying to make money here, you're trying to win the contest. In fact, you're better off making the potions for that and then focusing on relationships for better cards.

The game seriously needs a mode that scraps the contest, its the core issue with making the game play so weirdly out of sync with what it wants to be (It wants to be a shop sim, but its not, as becoming a good potion shop isn't what you want to do, you want three potions for the contest and a good card hand.)

The whole contest system being what you use to pay off debt really does make any of the POTION SELLING stuff pointless. Marketing? Who cares, traits? Who cares. Better shelves? 5% more gold from potion selling? It doesn't matter in the slightest.

Only reason I sold potions was to afford adventures, heroes guild and treasure.
I can't agree more with you about traits, I didn't even care learning about them.

[Wyld kin]

nice speech there, you should give Sylvia some tips, i'd make her a good card i'm sure.

unfortunately, i'm affraid you mentioned never using Muktusk's upgrades ?

and, as it goes you MUST uprade to a better cauldron to even make the potions for the competitions be of enough value to stand a chance during the haggling process, any value under 3 stars of what is recomended is unrealistic to accomplish, much less make it to the last competition on the free cauldron you get at the start of the game.

however i do admit that indeed, many game mechanics are unessesary, i think mainly due to how they are implemented, the enhancement on the bought furniture along the enchantments, being the least usefull of all, the former because it's such an inferrior option to just bying the better crafts (clearly not even worth the effort) and the enchantement because not only is it such a small percentage, but it dosent even last two days, meaning you have to get back to the shop and sell to profit from it, meaning you cant sell as much, and such, it's useless.
marketing hoever is extremely useful, although indeed superficial, and gardening as well, in fact it even make Quiin's shop downright irrelevant once you unlock and upgrade it.

anyways, thanks much for sharing your thoughts and insights, i hope the devs give it a look :).

[Waterpie]

Originally posted by Wyld kin:

nice speech there, you should give Sylvia some tips, i'd make her a good card i'm sure.

unfortunately, i'm affraid you mentioned never using Muktusk's upgrades ?

and, as it goes you MUST uprade to a better cauldron to even make the potions for the competitions be of enough value to stand a chance during the haggling process, any value under 3 stars of what is recomended is unrealistic to accomplish, much less make it to the last competition on the free cauldron you get at the start of the game.

however i do admit that indeed, many game mechanics are unessesary, i think mainly due to how they are implemented, the enhancement on the bought furniture along the enchantments, being the least usefull of all, the former because it's such an inferrior option to just bying the better crafts (clearly not even worth the effort) and the enchantement because not only is it such a small percentage, but it dosent even last two days, meaning you have to get back to the shop and sell to profit from it, meaning you cant sell as much, and such, it's useless.
marketing hoever is extremely useful, although indeed superficial, and gardening as well, in fact it even make Quiin's shop downright irrelevant once you unlock and upgrade it.

anyways, thanks much for sharing your thoughts and insights, i hope the devs give it a look :).

hey, thanks for the reply,
About Muktuk, I did craft new cauldrons but I never bothered to enhance them. My bad if it was not clear. Same goes for shelves.

[khetrak]

I maxed 1 relationship
I never used:
- Gardening

yeah that checks out

[Will]

I'm almost at second boss fight, I already made the two potions needed on the 11th day, and I've just been hanging out and making some money the entire time.
One of the days was a triple "price increase" buff on ice tonic, made like 10k that one day.

I often go to the shop and buy up all the discount items, otherwise not so much.

I use the guild investment almost everyday

I've bought the biggest pirate treasure every day

[Airkixer]

The game is definitely too easy towards the end. Spoilers: The final fight with Maven was just... awful. All that chatter and bigging up the fight... Only to produce the exact same potion and expect me to beat it again... Which I did instantly, because both my potions round 1&2, beat Robin's without even needing to haggle. The final boss of the game just rolled over.

I still think it's a shame they've already downed the difficulty slightly early on too, but the fact the ending doesn't get harder either is just awful balancing. And as OP said, there's so many mechanics in this game for you to utilise.. and doing so is absolutely overkill.

[BootyHunter]

The game is legitimately too easy if this is possible. The economics part is probably fine if you're really good and min maxing your profits and upgrading your gear but beating the game with basically the default deck seems absolutely stupid. Also the not needing to haggle mechanic on the bosses I think harms the gameplay a lot. You should always have to do a card battle 2 out of the 3 rounds there never be auto wins except if you won 2 out of the 3 haggles. Maybe they should rework it and make the potions a requirement for entry but have then the haggling battles always. I know logically you're supposed to have the better potion value wise but gameplay wise it doesn't serve the game if you don't have to fight the boss.

[BootyHunter]

Originally posted by Lexi:

Because of the way the game is designed (Eg make the three contest potions, nothing else matters) lots of those systems get ignored. Plus, gold is worthless because of it. Expanding the shop is worthless. Why even SELL potions? You're not trying to make money here, you're trying to win the contest. In fact, you're better off making the potions for that and then focusing on relationships for better cards.

The game seriously needs a mode that scraps the contest, its the core issue with making the game play so weirdly out of sync with what it wants to be (It wants to be a shop sim, but its not, as becoming a good potion shop isn't what you want to do, you want three potions for the contest and a good card hand.)

The whole contest system being what you use to pay off debt really does make any of the POTION SELLING stuff pointless. Marketing? Who cares, traits? Who cares. Better shelves? 5% more gold from potion selling? It doesn't matter in the slightest.

Honestly the way you put it is pretty true. If you're good at finding the most efficient way to brewing the competition potions you don't need much gold or literally any upgrades. I don't even think cauldron upgrades for better potions are necessary all the time but they definitely help.

[Tiwaking! 56k NZ]

Originally posted by BootyHunter:

The game is legitimately too easy if this is possible.

I have been investigating Speedrunning strategies for this game and Gifith's strategy seems to match the optimal strategy. Not only do you skip some unnecessary mechanics, but you also skip a lot of the dialogue and loading screens.

[TripSin]

Yeah, this game is full of stupid design imho. A lot of the systems are not only dumb, but as you've pointed out - you can just ignore them and it actuallymakes the game easier to just ignore them. The trait system is not only idiotic, but a lot of us can't even see the traits because the developer uses colors that people with color blindness can't differentiate.

[Sojourner]

I agree with the OP, game really falls apart after the first week. Honestly can't tell if some aspects of the game are features or bugs (Heros would lose missions if you gave them too many potions or would just auto lose despite saying they would win in the final zone / Some characters refusing to let themselves be maxxed out / etc).

Challenged myself to hit +1,000,000 coins to see what would happen (the answer is nothing, it just rolls over back to 000,000 and goes again). Still skipped most of the last week to get it over with. Honestly blew my mind to see that the devs NERFED the boss fights.

Fantastic visuals but 0 depth, the card art was so cute. If only they spend more time on the GAME aspect of their game!