How to Hermit

[SkiRich]

I'm looking for some advice to use the hermetic society to my advantage.
I've mostly been having my emperors join benedictine.
But I think I want to try out some of the features of hermits.

Not knowing what best to choose, create, go find, etc, I'm looking for advice on playing a hermit while being emperor.

so far i remember someone saying stay away from the observing stars events. OK got that, but how do you do things like craft weapons or plate armor etc. Things like that.

What do you do when joining hermetics?

Below this line I'll summarize what people write here for quick reference.

Rolling edit:
Removed rolling edit since there is lots of info in the thread worth reading in full.

[al_x_ator2411]

Apart from the stargazing event line, the other thing you should avoid is raiding a rivals lab. You or your aprentice can end up dead or in a dangeon (possibly forever) with very minimal rewards.

All the rest of the events are good (especially the book and artifact crafting ones). Even the summon event leads to good results most of the time (just use an igredient for boosting).

[SkiRich]

What about choosing an apprentice. My son is still too young and it will be at least 9 years before I can nominate him. Should I pick someone now and change them later or wait?

[SkiRich]

Originally posted by Doomcheese:

Originally posted by SkiRich:

What about choosing an apprentice. My son is still too young and it will be at least 9 years before I can nominate him. Should I pick someone now and change them later or wait?

If you want to powergame, you can just get rid of your apprentice when the time comes...

any malus by doing that?

[galadon3]

ok lets see:

- Never take the stargazing mission
- Never take the trash other guys lab mission
- Make sure you always have some ingridients they help with a lot of stuff
- horoscopes for your kids are something I never found particularly usefull
- always take the mission to find some lost writings, if the top-option is to go to Alexandria TAKE THAT
- For Inventions: they are pretty much all nice to have, so its more about wich stats you want boosted more (the gathering is more likely if you have good relations with members so try to improve those)
- Opus Magnum: nice too, especially having several and being able to swap depending on wich you need, I usually start with Alchemy -> Universal Panacea, wich gives a nice health bonus, so helps getting through illnesses alive and if you want that old ruler to just hang on a bit longer.
- Write Paper: Pretty much guaranteed points for promotion, best to make that one an important decision and use it everytime you can. The normal effort without risk is usually good enough to pass.
- Gather ingridients, always do that as soon as you can. Gathering Herbs works with stewardship, hunting with martial, market with diplo

The really usefull options the society opens up and wich can help alot with keeping your realm happy.

1. Apprentice: there are two usefull ways to use that:
A) Make your heir your apprentice, wich gets him into the society (even if his learning score would be too bad) and he can already start getting ranks so he might be 2nd or 3rd rank when you take over with him.
B) Make powerfull / problematic vassals apprentice. It immidiately gives an opinion bonus for honorific title, being in the same society AND you being higher in the society (usually about +30 points added up)

An Apprentice is done with his apprenticeship after a while and you can take another one. So if your heir is still years away from being old enough you can take a vassal first and the heir when the vassal is done.

2. Invite to Stargazing:
An activity you can invite other member of the society to (must be at peace not in hiding, seclusion etc), you should use that as often as its from cooldown. It has two major benefits:
- You have a chance to generate tech-points every time you do it
- There is a quite a chance to become friends with the invited character, wich is why making powerfull vassals apprentice doubled good. You can invite them and have a good chance to become friends.
A realm where the 2-3 most powerfull vassals have a +100 relationbonus from friendship with the ruler is usually pretty stable.

Potion of Eudemonia:
Big Benefit of the Hermetics: can get rid of stressed or depressed, should be used on yourself as soon as you suffer those traits, same for the heir (especially stressed since you have that random chance to just drop dead from stress).
It can also be used as a temporary opinion boost with a character who has any of those traits (I use it sparingly not to empty my reserves of ingridients).

[SkiRich]

When can I write an Opus Magnus? Is that a decision in the intrigue list? I assume I need to be at a certain level since I dont see it.

[SkiRich]

Originally posted by SkiRich:

When can I write an Opus Magnus? Is that a decision in the intrigue list? I assume I need to be at a certain level since I dont see it.

Ah I see, I have to be magus level for that.
What can I do to speed the level up?

[galadon3]

max-level, you can then right click yourself and you can write one opus magnum per character (costs 500 esoteric power)

Writing the papers as often as you can, do the missions (stargazing and trashing some other guys place just has a lot of drawbacks / possible negative consequences thats why I never do them)

[al_x_ator2411]

Galadon3 pretty much covered everything.

Some extra notes:

- Perhaps you should try the "don't try!" things once for flavor but only when your ruler has enough kids, is already near death and has a good designated regent (and an expendable aprentice for raiding labs).

- Kids horoscopes are not totally useless, they can lead to good results. Just don't force the kid if they want to follow another path. It can lead to disastrous results: I once had a genius heir turn apathetic and later just die.

- Another thing you can try on yourself is Scrying. It's totally RNG like the contact the divine thing but it turns out good most of the time.

[Malus]

I am usualy in hermetics only as long as i can keep creating new artifacts. Else o usualy swap to a different one, preferably devil worshipers if i am female.

But the force recruit through apprentices is quite good opinion booster, especially if you are the 3rd or 4th rank.

[that guy]

Once I've created all the artifacts, I don't really stay in the Hermetic society. Now that there is a limit of only having 4 active books, even less of a reason to keep being hermetic.

Inviting people to go stargaze does not depend on someone's opinion of you. It's a good way to turn rivals into friends.

I dislike scrying. If you get a good vision, unless you can force something good to happen, you will usually wind up with something bad happening.

For example, I had a good military vision. I ended up losing a limb. When I checked the code, the good military vision is supposed to be "completed" if I gain a new commander trait. Unfortunately I already had 2 commander traits. Failure to get a good outcome from a good vision results in bad things happening to you.

[SkiRich]

Originally posted by that guy:

Once I've created all the artifacts, I don't really stay in the Hermetic society. Now that there is a limit of only having 4 active books, even less of a reason to keep being hermetic.

Inviting people to go stargaze does not depend on someone's opinion of you. It's a good way to turn rivals into friends.

I dislike scrying. If you get a good vision, unless you can force something good to happen, you will usually wind up with something bad happening.

For example, I had a good military vision. I ended up losing a limb. When I checked the code, the good military vision is supposed to be "completed" if I gain a new commander trait. Unfortunately I already had 2 commander traits. Failure to get a good outcome from a good vision results in bad things happening to you.

Four active books limit, is that for all books, even the ones you craft from another society?

[galadon3]

yea you can have 4 books active no matter where they come from. But having a bigger library allows to swap according to the situation. For example having health-bonus active when you are ill or old. Having Stewardship active in peacetime and swap for martial when you plan a war in the near future to get more demesne levies or to swap to intrigue when you have an important plot.

And I usually like to try to create some book that produces money (not magnum opus but writing book decision) wich I usually give my heir. Its nice if he can use his active book slots for some years to produce 3-5 gold a months, before you play as him.^^

[CrUsHeR]

Another downside is the "magic" potion you can brew - if you don't know which ingredients are healthy and which are unhealthy, these may lead to depressed later on and sometimes lunatic as well. Plus the apathetic debuff.

[galadon3]

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Another downside is the "magic" potion you can brew - if you don't know which ingredients are healthy and which are unhealthy, these may lead to depressed later on and sometimes lunatic as well. Plus the apathetic debuff.

Usually use two random ingridients and 90% of the time it just works, rest of the time I get the depressed trait (wich just means another potion). Any idea wich ingridient can lead to lunatic, cause I never got that? (might be due to the fact that most of the time I use herbs gathering)

[CrUsHeR]

Originally posted by galadon3:

Originally posted by CrUsHeR:

Another downside is the "magic" potion you can brew - if you don't know which ingredients are healthy and which are unhealthy, these may lead to depressed later on and sometimes lunatic as well. Plus the apathetic debuff.

Usually use two random ingridients and 90% of the time it just works, rest of the time I get the depressed trait (wich just means another potion). Any idea wich ingridient can lead to lunatic, cause I never got that? (might be due to the fact that most of the time I use herbs gathering)

I think i was using the local marketplace option every time. Two ingredients, don't know which ones because i usually click through events real fast after X hours and Y realm size.

Only read about the bad and good ingredients today after seeing this thread.

edit: after checking the list again, it's probably Mercury - this was actually used by alchemists and "healers", usually causing extreme insanity after some time ;)