Friendship issues.

[Zet395]

So, this is something I never really paid that much attention to until I got a bit later on into the game. However, I eventually figured out that in order to get the most out of a party, you really want to make sure that all the members get along and be friends.

For a long while, I had two parties, and my first one that I've had since the start of the game was really good, and they all get along perfectly. However, my second party has some members that don't get along, seemingly no matter what I try. One of the members—despite their kind nature—seems to fight with LITERALLY everyone. One of which are a member of my first party, to the point where they're straight death brawling.

So, I had a few questions.

First, will there be actual consequences if I don't take care of this character? (like an actual fight that will kill a character or something.)

Second, if there won't be consequences to really worry about, are there any ways to fix the problem of them fighting with everyone, or would I just be better off getting rid of them, and refitting the party? (I'm hoping not, because grinding a new member for a party is not very convenient, as there's no way to really catch them up to where my current party members are at in terms of level and stats.)

[BennyT8]

I'm not an expert, but the developer is on here very often and can probably answer.

I've not seen two characters kill each other, but negative events can worsen mood until they get to the point where someone might leave.

For your second question, I've a bit of a longer answer. I was messing around before NG+ and it seems to work as a positive feedback loop. If two characters are acquaintances or worse, their relationship history will be littered with "-3 - Had an awkward conversation" and will deteriorate. Once characters are already friendly, there will be far more "+2 - Had a nice chat" and improve automatically.

To break the cycle, you need to get them to a positive position fairly quickly so that any positive efforts aren't cancelled out by those awkward conversations. I had a problematic adventurer who had a negative relationship with just about everyone. I don't know if this is the best way of doing it, but I targeted the relationships I wanted to fix first - the ones that were least negative. I then sent them on a Team building exercise with those five, which added +20 and was enough to make one of them friends. I then went through each of the others starting with the highest non-friendly relationship - dining with the guild master, opulent meals and going on quests together until they had enough of a relationship to become friends. Once they're friends you can leave them to it and move to the next pairing.

Unfortunately that only works if you've got time and money to burn. I was playing on fairly easy settings while I was trying to work out some of the mechanics.

And some characters just traits that make things harder. Some are obviously problems on their own - Drunkard and Hotblooded can both cause negative reactions. Others don't work in pairs - Kind and Sadist, for example. And some aren't so obvious. Tiny characters take offense at small jokes and lucky characters get accused of cheating at cards.

Overall, you need to work out if the effort to get the positive relationship (and in some cases to maintain it) is more than just training up a new character.


Edit: Sorry - I forgot to add that you should put them in a party together. Sometimes you'll get the random party training event which will grant experience and improve relationships.

[Zet395]

Originally posted by BennyT8:

I'm not an expert, but I was messing around before NG+ and it seems to work as a positive feedback loop. So if two characters are acquaintances or worse, their relationship history will be littered with "-3 - Had an awkward conversation" and will deteriorate. Once characters are already friendly, there will be far more "+2 - Had a nice chat" and improve automatically.

To break the cycle, you need to get them to a positive position fairly quickly so that any positive efforts aren't cancelled out by those awkward conversations. I had a problematic adventurer who had a negative relationship with just about everyone. I don't know if this is the best way of doing it, but I targeted the relationships I wanted to fix first - the ones that were least negative. I then sent them on a Team building exercise with those five, which added +20 and was enough to make one of them friends. I then went through each of the others starting with the highest non-friendly relationship - dining with the guild master, opulent meals and going on quests together until they had enough of a relationship to become friends. Once they're friends you can leave them to it and move to the next pairing.

Unfortunately that only works if you've got time and money to burn. I was playing on fairly easy settings while I was trying to work out some of the mechanics.

And some characters just traits that make things harder. Some are obviously problems on their own - Drunkard and Hotblooded can both cause negative reactions. Others don't work in pairs - Kind and Sadist, for example. And some aren't so obvious. Tiny characters take offense at small jokes and lucky characters get accused of cheating at cards.

Overall, you need to work out if the effort to get the positive relationship (and in some cases to maintain it) is more than just training up a new character.

My main problem is that my second party not only fails to get along with each character (some are best friends, but are negative with the others for example,)

Say, as an example, one of my Bishops have the kind nature. However, they have made enemies of seemingly everyone. Not a single friend. It wasn't until I realized that, when I realized what poor synergy the squad as a whole had with each other, and how negatively the people within the party got along with everyone else at the guild.

[BennyT8]

It's difficult, but I don't think there's an easy option. You essentially have three options.

1. Cut the problematic characters loose (and it sounds like it's going to be at least a fair chunk of your existing second party), bring in replacements and make sure to create positive relationships with those replacements as quickly as you can.
2. Improve those relationships one by one in the costly manner described above.
3. Ignore it and let them keep fighting with low synergy, risking them getting in fights with your primary team and reducing their mood as well.

If you want, you can effectively cheat for a short while - play with a custom config file (Options > Gameplay > MIscellaneous). It tells you where to find the file and everything is well labelled. So you can reduce training duration and cost. If you have characters that you like you can turn on the scouting option and increase points available for scouting in the config file. That way you can exactly recreate the characters that you're trying to replace if their traits are normally too expensive.

Other than that, I'm still fairly new to the game myself, so I can only suggest waiting for GreenGuy to take a look at the discussion and see if he has a better solution.

[Zet395]

Originally posted by BennyT8:

It's difficult, but I don't think there's an easy option. You essentially have three options.

1. Cut the problematic characters loose (and it sounds like it's going to be at least a fair chunk of your existing second party), bring in replacements and make sure to create positive relationships with those replacements as quickly as you can.
2. Improve those relationships one by one in the costly manner described above.
3. Ignore it and let them keep fighting with low synergy, risking them getting in fights with your primary team and reducing their mood as well.

If you want, you can effectively cheat for a short while - play with a custom config file (Options > Gameplay > MIscellaneous). It tells you where to find the file and everything is well labelled. So you can reduce training duration and cost. If you have characters that you like you can turn on the scouting option and increase points available for scouting in the config file. That way you can exactly recreate the characters that you're trying to replace if their traits are normally too expensive.

Other than that, I'm still fairly new to the game myself, so I can only suggest waiting for GreenGuy to take a look at the discussion and see if he has a better solution.

I really appreciate the feedback, because I've been struggling all day to figure out what I wanted to do with this problem, either getting rid of the party as a whole, or try salvaging it somehow.

Something that might help me choose is this. I'm curious about what you had said before. If two become friends, they will just improve from there? Can they not lose that status? Or did I misunderstand that? Because if that's the case, getting people to friend status ASAP sounds like the way to go if I want these fights to stop.

[BennyT8]

There's interactions between characters beyond the events that get reported on. If you go to the relationships page for any of your characters and hover the cursor over one of the listed characters you'll see a list of events in their relationship. I'd post a picture, but haven't worked out how to do that in steam.

In that list of events, you'll see a range of things. Some of them will be major events that you see reports on - Seeding conflict, fights, etc. Some will be things that you directly control - sending them on training or quests together. And some of them will be interactions that you don't directly see. These interactions can be positive or negative. A negative one is the "Had an awkward conversation" which reduces the relationship by a further 3. A mild positive one is "Had a nice chat" which increases it by 2. And then I think there's "Spent some time together" for +5.

The trick is that pairs of adventurers who are already friends will have far more of those positive events than negative ones, therefore the relationship will slowly grow naturally. Pairs which are more antagonistic already will have more awkward conversations, sending the relationship spiralling down toward rivals and nemeses.

Now there are exceptions. Characters who are already friends can lose the status, yes. But from what I've observed, that tends to be when there's either a natural dislike (the Kind/Sadist conflict, for example) or due to a random event like the "Seeding conflict" one I mentioned earlier which can lose enough relationship points quickly enough to outweigh those slow positive interactions and cause them to lose friendship.

But generally, if you can get a pair of characters to a friendship status through shared training, quests and meals, then you can ignore that pair and let it grow naturally after that while you fix other relationships. Just keep an eye on the reports each day - if they have a random negative event that causes them to lose the friendship, try to fix it quickly so that it goes back to naturally improving.

[Zet395]

Originally posted by BennyT8:

There's interactions between characters beyond the events that get reported on. If you go to the relationships page for any of your characters and hover the cursor over one of the listed characters you'll see a list of events in their relationship. I'd post a picture, but haven't worked out how to do that in steam.

In that list of events, you'll see a range of things. Some of them will be major events that you see reports on - Seeding conflict, fights, etc. Some will be things that you directly control - sending them on training or quests together. And some of them will be interactions that you don't directly see. These interactions can be positive or negative. A negative one is the "Had an awkward conversation" which reduces the relationship by a further 3. A mild positive one is "Had a nice chat" which increases it by 2. And then I think there's "Spent some time together" for +5.

The trick is that pairs of adventurers who are already friends will have far more of those positive events than negative ones, therefore the relationship will slowly grow naturally. Pairs which are more antagonistic already will have more awkward conversations, sending the relationship spiralling down toward rivals and nemeses.

Now there are exceptions. Characters who are already friends can lose the status, yes. But from what I've observed, that tends to be when there's either a natural dislike (the Kind/Sadist conflict, for example) or due to a random event like the "Seeding conflict" one I mentioned earlier which can lose enough relationship points quickly enough to outweigh those slow positive interactions and cause them to lose friendship.

But generally, if you can get a pair of characters to a friendship status through shared training, quests and meals, then you can ignore that pair and let it grow naturally after that while you fix other relationships. Just keep an eye on the reports each day - if they have a random negative event that causes them to lose the friendship, try to fix it quickly so that it goes back to naturally improving.

Okay. I appreciate the feedback very much. I might just void that party and start from scratch. It'll suck, but it kinda has to be done at this point. (In hindsight, putting a kind and sadist in the same party was a dumb idea, but when the person that's kind makes enemies of EVERYONE, something is up with that, and I just gotta say screw it, they are just more trouble than it's worth.)

[BennyT8]

Before you dismiss them, I'd suggest waiting for GreenGuy to take a look. I'd hate for you to do something irreversible due to my amateur advice and then for him to come along and say "Oh, you just need to do this."

But yes - I'm a little surprised that it's your kind character that's causing all the trouble.

Whatever you end up deciding to do though, good luck.

[Zet395]

Originally posted by BennyT8:

Before you dismiss them, I'd suggest waiting for GreenGuy to take a look. I'd hate for you to do something irreversible due to my amateur advice and then for him to come along and say "Oh, you just need to do this."

But yes - I'm a little surprised that it's your kind character that's causing all the trouble.

Whatever you end up deciding to do though, good luck.

Well, I'm not sure how responsive the dev is to the community, since I just got into the game a few days ago now. That, and I'm very anxious at being social, so I don't usually go on forums, unless I really need help with something.

But yeah, I found it weird, too. The kind character being the one that's causing the problems with everyone. Not so kind, huh?

[BennyT8]

Usually he's pretty good about responding. Most chats see an answer within a day or so.

If you want a bunch of details on the mechanics for the game, there's a guide by Pure_Poetry who is also pretty good at responding to discussions. As well as the mechanics it covers things like optimal party builds and where you can find certain traits. Just be aware that there's some spoilers in there if you haven't completed the game yet. I don't think it covers your specific issue, but there's plenty of other information in there.

From what I've seen on here the community for this game is pretty positive. I've asked questions that lots of people know the answer to and generally the answers are quick and polite. Don't be afraid to jump in with more questions.

[Zet395]

Originally posted by BennyT8:

Usually he's pretty good about responding. Most chats see an answer within a day or so.

If you want a bunch of details on the mechanics for the game, there's a guide by Pure_Poetry who is also pretty good at responding to discussions. As well as the mechanics it covers things like optimal party builds and where you can find certain traits. Just be aware that there's some spoilers in there if you haven't completed the game yet. I don't think it covers your specific issue, but there's plenty of other information in there.

From what I've seen on here the community for this game is pretty positive. I've asked questions that lots of people know the answer to and generally the answers are quick and polite. Don't be afraid to jump in with more questions.

I will try. Though, this is the only topic that's come up that's concerned me, because grinding can take a bit, so if I'm to replace a party/party member, it would take a while to catch someone up. And even then, they can't catch up to the main party members, because they will always be behind on levels.

[BennyT8]

I'm assuming that you're fairly far into the game, so your primary party is at least level 16. This also assumes that you've not got the setting that increases enemy level with time, since if you have it's not worth wasting the days required to bring them up to speed.

There's a common accessory that grants 50% bonus experience. Slap that on.
Put your new character in your main party and do a couple of quests that are probably a star short of the maximum level because you're effectively a man down while you're doing this. If you're on relatively easy settings, then aim for the defend against waves type mission; if you're on harder ones aim for collection and mapping quests and avoid combat at least initially. Doing this just a couple of times can get them up to level 6 or more.

After that, use the training ground every two turns, remembering to have a meal with someone just before starting the training if you want to boost relationships. After you've trained a few times and are kitted out with the best gear that you can make, they should then be able to join in with one of your stronger teams on quests so that they pick up levels faster. Just be aware that they're still a little fragile compared to the others.

They don't quite catch up, but due to the exponential increase in experience required per level, it's surprising how quickly they can get within a couple of levels. At that point you can treat them as a normal party member and you should be okay.

[Zet395]

Originally posted by BennyT8:

I'm assuming that you're fairly far into the game, so your primary party is at least level 16. This also assumes that you've not got the setting that increases enemy level with time, since if you have it's not worth wasting the days required to bring them up to speed.

There's a common accessory that grants 50% bonus experience. Slap that on.
Put your new character in your main party and do a couple of quests that are probably a star short of the maximum level because you're effectively a man down while you're doing this. If you're on relatively easy settings, then aim for the defend against waves type mission; if you're on harder ones aim for collection and mapping quests and avoid combat at least initially. Doing this just a couple of times can get them up to level 6 or more.

After that, use the training ground every two turns, remembering to have a meal with someone just before starting the training if you want to boost relationships. After you've trained a few times and are kitted out with the best gear that you can make, they should then be able to join in with one of your stronger teams on quests so that they pick up levels faster. Just be aware that they're still a little fragile compared to the others.

They don't quite catch up, but due to the exponential increase in experience required per level, it's surprising how quickly they can get within a couple of levels. At that point you can treat them as a normal party member and you should be okay.

Yeah, I'm generally between the 13-15 area. So, they'll be behind by like... I'm unsure if the training grounds can get them to either level 8 or 10. So, they'll always be quite behind. And I usually have a habit of grinding more than I have to. I do it in pretty much every JRPG and RPG I play. And in this, since I don't want to lose a good adventurer permanently, I don't want to take the risk of going in unprepared.

So, I'm trying to play as careful as possible.

[TheGreenGuy]

BennyT8 has already pretty much already summed up the options to improve relationships.

1. The Teambuilding-Assignment can give a big boost in relationship points
2. When you have the meal upgrade, you can improve the relationship between two adventurers each day
3. Complete quests with both of them in the same team
4. (Minor) Have one of them heal the other one in battle

[Zet395]

Originally posted by TheGreenGuy:

BennyT8 has already pretty much already summed up the options to improve relationships.

1. The Teambuilding-Assignment can give a big boost in relationship points
2. When you have the meal upgrade, you can improve the relationship between two adventurers each day
3. Complete quests with both of them in the same team
4. (Minor) Have one of them heal the other one in battle

Ah. Yeah, I had feared those were my only options. Well, thanks for the response. I guess I'll just need to more closely watch and manage friendships. I was hoping I wouldn't have to worry too much about it, but it is what it is.