Co-operation between museums?

[therealjohnconnor]

From what I've seen from playthroughs so far, we can't transfer exhibits or staff between museums, but they share analysis room (+Kudosh item) unlocks, workshop blueprints and POIs.

So if a Bungle botanist wants an exhibit from somewhere other than the Burrows, they'll have to go on an expedition to a POI on another museum's map, likely the eastern Prehistory map already pioneered by a botanist from Memento Mile, though that vampire plant from the trailers was probably found in the Netherworld...

But what if the Memento Mile botanist wants one of those handy sprinklers from Bungle Wasteland? Sure, they can print one in the workshop, but will still have to go on an expedition of their own to the Burrows to get the parts to do so as they're only available from there. They'll probably spend a lot of time in the analysis room disposing of exhibits they've found inappropriate for display in their museum for general unlocks in their area of expertise.

Am I right so far? The consequence for gameplay seem to be a lot of cutting between museums as an expedition from one finds something of more use to another, which will then have to train up experts for their own expedition to obtain their copy. And that'll happen a lot between Star awards for particular museums, much as we'd cut back to our research hospital/campus in 2PH/2PH.

[Two Point Abby]

Heya, you're right that you don't share inventories between Museums, but your 'career' progress sticks around.

As your progress through Acts you'll unlock new developments, discoveries and decor, so your museums grow alongside your career (: So, yes you'll return to your previous locations, but it's up to you to decide how those museums grow and develop, as you discover and find new things.

Once you unlock an expedition map or point of interest on the map, those locations are available at all of your museums. So for example, you might head back to your original museum in the city location, but now you've not only got more areas of the prehistoric map to explore, but also the supernatural or marine life maps.

Your playthrough will be very different to another player: your city museum might go HAM with all the prehistory stuff, whereas another player might diversify into lots of themes

You're right in that there might be some repetition and you repeating analysis to unlock the sprinklers (for example) - our previous titles had A LOT of this however, and from feedback we wanted you to feel like your builds grow with your career. So unlike TPH and TPC you aren't restarting from scratch each Act, instead building on top of what you have.

Please let me know if you want more details on this - tried my best to give an overview but obviously there's a lot of detail in how the level flow and career progresses (:

OH! and you can jump in sandbox too and play around with things there!

[therealjohnconnor]

Thanks for your expeditious and comprehensive reply, especially only weeks from release.

I used to go back over all 2PC's tutorial campuses to add in later-introduced features and then expand student numbers as much as available plots allowed, so 2PM's tinkering aspects have great appeal to me. I can certainly see myself visiting the same POI over and over again just to get every artefact to pristine quality (+incidentally winning analysis unlocks on inferior quality interim discoveries), then trying to optimise the display of these artefacts. In other words, 'only' five museums is fine with me when each has so much more potential to be made the best of on revisits as new game mechanics are introduced (+DLC will undoubtedly add more themes in due course).

2PM's emphasis on the player's curatorial career development seems central, but it also seems to me that there will have to be a lot more careful investment needed in shaping exactly the staff you need over the life of each museum, especially when these are non-transferable.