Antiquarians are important - the game just forgot to tell you

[Kamuizin]

After 133h played i just now found that antiquarian has some specific abilities, not displayed anywhere:


She increases the amount of gold you can carry in a stack by 750, bringing the maximum from 1750 to 2500. Every subsequent Antiquarian will further increase it by another 750 (for a theoretical maximum of 4750 with a full Antiquarian party).
She causes unique loot to drop from curios and battles; Minor Antiques (worth 500 gold each and stack to 20) and Rare Antiques (worth 1250 each and stack to 5). Antiques will only be looted from curios if the Antiquarian interacts with it. Rare Antiques, being more expensive than their minor counterparts, are less likely to be dropped or looted. The exact ratio is 1:6.
Exclusive to The Color of Madness DLC With The Color of Madness DLC, the Antiquarian also increases your Comet Shard earnings in the Farmstead by 15% if she is in your party.


Game should stated this more explicity, i had to see some articles and read Antiquarian wiki to find this one. I always avoided this hero, and that's probally one of the reasons i didn't have enough gold at begin.

[No One]

Antiquarians make the game way too easy and I regularly play without them.

[\tg/ World Peace]

The Bank District kind of renders Antiquarians obsolete, or at least unnecessary. If you dump all your excess trinkets it will be producing multiple stacks worth of gold every week for free and all you really need to worry about is heirlooms. She's still good against the Siren though.

[RopeDrink]

If by 'good against the Siren' you mean "take her so that Siren (might) seduce a weaker hero", which involves less kill potential against both her and the rest of the dungeon overall, with no guarantee of her being seduced at all, then no, she's not good against the Siren.

As for Banks & Antiquarians, one involves recruiting an entirely free hero and doing runs even in ez-mode apprentice for big profits on demand, while the other involves using heirlooms. Realistically, you don't need a Bank and don't need many Antiquarians to live a comfortable life in the Hamlet, unless you enjoy smashing the upgrade-buttons on every hero willy-nilly and find yourself lobbing every single hero into a stress-activity after every run while trying to wipe/lock good/bad quirks as much as possible.

I never have (and never will) build a Bank, as handy as it is. And yes, when you can take home 80-100k profit just by stacking Antiquarians, I can see why some would choose to avoid that for the sake of challenge.

Still, I wouldn't regard them as vital or "important" in the grand scheme of things. After all, there was a time when they didn't exist at all and people managed just fine.

[Xavi-Da-Imp]

Also ALWAYS open curios, like chests or other random crap that grant items, with her. Even when you pick a torch, if you use her to do it you will get a relic.

[Gilmoy]

And she adds 1 relic to every battle loot drop.

A Long mission usually has 30+ total of curios and battles.
That's 30+ antiques, which is a full slot of 20 minor antiques, usually a full slot of 5 rare antiques, and 1-2 partial slots of extras.

Warrens Challenge: Fill 2 full slots with 40 minor antiques.
Bring all of the food, and about 5 herbs to create more food.
Convert food into hallway fights, by walking.

Could you get 60? is that mathematically feasible?
Or do hunger checks spawn faster than new battles?

[No One]

If you want to cheese the siren, use low-damage stuns. Bounty hunter with uppercut and flashbang, for example.
Maybe also bring a fully kitted ABM or OCC and stun the siren herself. That's always amusing.

P.S. Old-school game-style history time. I call it the magikarp principle.
The magikarp is so obviously terrible you're supposed to get a hunch there's more to it and level it anyway. Or even just level it for laughs, and then...gyarados.
In Ninja Gaiden Black there's a wooden sword. It is a very typical wooden sword...with seven upgrade levels as opposed to the standard 3. Hmm.
In DD, the antiquarian is obviously useless in combat compared to anyone else. No HP, no damage, no healing. Hmm. Did they just forget one character, or...?

[\tg/ World Peace]

Originally posted by RopeDrink:

If by 'good against the Siren' you mean "take her so that Siren (might) seduce a weaker hero", which involves less kill potential against both her and the rest of the dungeon overall, with no guarantee of her being seduced at all, then no, she's not good against the Siren.

As for Banks & Antiquarians, one involves recruiting an entirely free hero and doing runs even in ez-mode apprentice for big profits on demand, while the other involves using heirlooms. Realistically, you don't need a Bank and don't need many Antiquarians to live a comfortable life in the Hamlet, unless you enjoy smashing the upgrade-buttons on every hero willy-nilly and find yourself lobbing every single hero into a stress-activity after every run while trying to wipe/lock good/bad quirks as much as possible.

I never have (and never will) build a Bank, as handy as it is. And yes, when you can take home 80-100k profit just by stacking Antiquarians, I can see why some would choose to avoid that for the sake of challenge.

Still, I wouldn't regard them as vital or "important" in the grand scheme of things. After all, there was a time when they didn't exist at all and people managed just fine.

It's a 90%+ chance to take the Antiquarian and assuming you're not terrible then you'll be stacking Flash Powder on her, and whoever she targets will likely dodge. The boss's entire kit is invalidated.

As for the bank, just because you don't like it doesn't make it any less good. It's going to take at least 20-30 weeks to save up the heirlooms for the bank and between naturally accumulated gold and selling off junk trinkets 100k is realistic, which will passively generate 5k, compounding, for the rest of the game. Increasing the yield of early quests with antiquarians will provide a good jump start, but with free gold being generated in larger and larger amounts, gold from dungeons becomes much less important compared with heirlooms and trinkets.

[No One]

It's a 81.25% chance to take the antiquarian. Stopped reading there.

If you've ever run a character with 76% displayed to-hit, you know that's really really low. That's like unbuffed leper accuracy low.

[RopeDrink]

just because you don't like it doesn't make it any less good.

I'd be curious to know where I stated not liking the bank.
Answer: I didn't.

The point is less about good/bad and more about it not being necessary or overly important in the grand scheme of things, in the face of a separate comment branding the Antiquarian as more important than the game lets on. In short, neither actually are.

It's a 90%+ chance to take the Antiquarian

Yet that 10% can happen 100% of the time, and doesn't account for the rest of the dungeon. If your idea of 'good against X' involves being weaker up to (and including) that battle for the sake of said weaker slot being taken by the boss -- especially when that boss is around the 3rd easiest in the game and winnable in very few rounds -- then go for it.

Reminds me of someone else who suggested gimping your own heroes in numerous ways by using dead/useless trinkets and other detriments, which is a similar principle.

Realistically, taking a team better at both is just better.

assuming you're not terrible then you'll be stacking Flash Powder on her

Others will convey the opposite opinion - that taking Flash Power is the cringe option - which compounds the above point about taking a hero who is weaker overall and using weak skills for any reason to circumvent such a dull mechanic.

I feel people are way too concerned about the heroes being seduced.

If you want to cheese the siren, use low-damage stuns. Bounty hunter with uppercut and flashbang, for example.

A better option.

[No One]

Originally posted by RopeDrink:

I'd sooner invest those heirlooms into something else no matter how easy they are to acquire.

I was going to say the bank pays for itself. Throw away money to pick up heirlooms, and you make back what you invested.

However, I forgot to take into account the invested gold. Banks run on interest, which means they tie up capital, which means the capital also has to be paid back or you're in the red in terms of available upgrades.

The bank's direct cost is 25 stacks of stuff. This means it has to pay back 44,000 gold in interest just to break even. This means banking roughly 883,300 gold.

As an example, let's start at one week: total investment of 927,500 gold. So the bank has to pay back 530 stacks of gold just to break even. It will take 21 weeks to do this; one week to pay back the building cost, and twenty weeks to pay back the investment cost. (As expected, since 5% interest is 1:20.)

21 weeks is kind of a long time.

What if we invest less, for shenanigans? This merely lengthens the payback time. You still need to take 20 weeks to pay back the investment, but now the building cost takes longer. At a relatively realistic 90,000 gold, it takes 10 weeks, for a total of 30.

For reference the Stygian time limit is 99 weeks....ouch.
For further reference, my godly, overlong testing estate is 400-ish weeks. Still nearly 10%.

The bank is a noob trap.
Though it is good for hitting the gold cap, if you're into playing DD for high scores. Is it two billion or two trillion? Anyway you can't demolish the bank, so once you get that high it's almost impossible to spend money faster than the bank provides it. You would have to put someone in the hamlet buildings, cancel, and put them back. You would have to do this for, what, hours? A long ass-time.

So yes the bank can give you infinite money and make it so you never have to worry about cash ever again, but also you have already won from other means the time the bank can do this.
Unless you're really, really bad at the game, I suppose? If you regularly have streaks of losing whole teams and bringing back nothing, you could also send them with nothing while letting the bank accumulate until you have infinite money.

[RopeDrink]

The bank is a noob trap.

I wouldn't have worded it quite that way, but you're bang on the money (har har har).

As said; I never have (and never will) build a bank, which has no bearing on whether I like it or not. It's just completely unnecessary. In fact, I often end most saves without building any districts, though a lot of the others are infinitely more useful.

At a relatively realistic 90,000 gold, it takes 10 weeks, for a total of 30.

Aye. As shown in my screenshots, this is an amount I walked home with after one stacked ANT run, though at the end of the day, neither are truly necessary (or more 'important' than the game lets on, which was the real point).

Unless you're really, really bad at the game, I suppose?

Bad play OR ignorance (regardless of whether one is an extension of the other). I put gold management as its own category in the knowledge curve as something not everyone really thinks about overmuch outside of "Gee, I'm in a bad spot and have no gold -- this game is too hard, herp!"

* Ending most dungeons stress-free ((no hamlet activities needed, give or take a few bad runs or afflictions)). Heroes can passively heal stress even when Idle (if not Antsy), and afflictions are cured at 0 stress regardless, but I wager a lot of players will throw even half-stressed heroes into the Bar/Abbey for the sake of a few thousand gold. I mean, it's cheap, right? Why not?

* Managing the entire roster instead of individual teams. I know how easy it is to see a big bundle of gold on the UI and get into the habit of smashing those upgrade buttons in Guild/Blacksmith on random heroes, then heading to the Embark screen and finding yourself a little shorter on change than you'd like. It's better to pick your next team first and focus only on those. After all, heroes you're not taking to a dungeon don't need those expensive upgrades, quirks, disease cures or even stress-relief.

* Trinkets are treasure. Knowing which are good to keep and which are ripe for the Pawn Shop makes for better overall treasure weighing in dungeons. I'm sure some might think that +X junk common trinket wasn't worth keeping, but it would have sold for more than the single yellow gem they took instead -- the benefit of which is that those actually stack. First thing I do before heading out is unequip all trinkets from the roster and sell the unnecessaries for pocket money, and I'll know exactly when to hoard discovered trinkets or throw them away for a bigger profit.

There's a bunch more that I'm forgetting (quirk management, hamlet upgrades that may save you gold later but nobody wants to buy before the actual proper upgrades, etc), but you get the idea.

[No One]

The week 10 bank thing makes me giggle.
You're unnecessarily behind the 8-ball until what, week 50? Week 60?

"Oh get an antiquarian to build up your interest!" You need ATQ to pay back all the crud you spent on the bank. In what world do you need ATQ and a bank?

[RopeDrink]

Originally posted by No One:

The week 10 bank thing makes me giggle.
You're unnecessarily behind the 8-ball until what, week 50? Week 60?

"Oh get an antiquarian to build up your interest!" You need ATQ to pay back all the crud you spent on the bank. In what world do you need ATQ and a bank?

Not in mine, that's for sure.

If I'm going to use one, I'll use the ANT. There's plenty of heroes to level up, and I have absolutely no problem making more gold while doing so -- even have fun experimenting with funky comps while doing it.

I genuinely do enjoy using ANTs as main fixtures of a party, even knowing full well that they're intentionally meant to be perceived as combat-garbo, though I don't think they're as bad as Red Hook probably intended them to be.

[\tg/ World Peace]

Week 10 bank is a deliberate strawman, because the gold accumulation will still be low and it uses up heirlooms that are needed for Hamlet upgrades. Week 20 is still probably too early in most runs because the Guild, Carriage Network, Blacksmith, and Sanitarium are all higher priority in the early game. Antiquarians can help build up a larger bankroll during that portion of the game, but the steep cost of teaching rank 1 abilities heavily disincentives you from actually spending that money on heroes recruited at level 0. I actually do like the class, so I like to keep one around for Siren battles, but Districts DLC turned her from a solid 1 of to a 0-1 of.

You're also fundamentally misunderstanding the reasoning behind using Antiquarian as Siren bait. The rationale is not as simple as Antiquarian is weak, therefore you should bring her to get mind controlled. Antiquarian's proactive abilities are weak, particularly the offensive abilities like Nervous Stab. Her stronger abilities are defensive in nature, and require stacking to really be effective. Therefore, she presents a lower threat then something like a hellion using Yawp or a flagellant using Redeem. There's no method of completely shutting down the Seduction the way Musk/Arb shut down Wilbur's marking, so reducing its effectiveness an antiquarian is the best available strategy.

Vapors vs Powder depends on enemies and character level. Powder gives 3x the hit reduction per stack at rank 1, but Vapors scales up better. Powder's larger numbers are good for high threat enemies like ghouls, Vapors is good for groups of trash enemies.

OP is correct that not recruiting antiquarians drastically reduces early game earnings.

[No One]

Specimen of alleged straw man in the wild:

My "pro tip" would be to recruit Antiquarians for your apprentice runs and save up all the cash you can, and build a bank ASAP (make sure you can spend 50 portraits by week 10).

Page 4 of the comments here. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2065003292 It's a whole meme. I think it might be contained to Reddit now, but it's a thing.

Try to verify your facts before boldly stating things that are the opposite of true. At least contain yourself to boldly stating reasonable disputations.

When you open your comment with a strawman accusation that is itself a strawman, then it lends a certain...quality to the perception of the rest of your comment.

Here's another specimen:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/262060/discussions/0/2999921513808835654/

You can find more by searching week 10 bank if you want.