The worst quirk at the start

[Sawrit]

Started a new game, went through tutorial, oh whats that Reynauld? A new quirk?
Scientific: -20% healing from the Vestals skills
Amazing.

What quirks did you guys get that completely screwed over your characters early on?

[SortaLumy]

I just had a character get love interest, deviant tastes, and the crimson curse by week 5. That last one's on me, though.

[Gamefever]

Early game?

I guess dud hitter or anything that makes it harder to hit monsters.

My opinion,
Just kick hero's to the curb till you get a bank built and have 200K gold sitting in it.
By then you get so much coming in on the interest it helps cover the costs of expeditions. If you can save up a lot more it the interest will cover the cost of upgrades on the hero's themselves. In the lategame it means you can then lock in perks and get rid of quirks at will across your whole roster. Its easier to do this early game than later.

Getting a bunch of gold means never spending a single gold piece on a hero for about 10-20 weeks, enough time to hunt down all the portraits you need to build the bank.

[CloudSeeker]

Is this a trick question? The worst quirk is most likely the worst in both early and late game.

Compulsive or Curious are the worst quirks. They have a 20% to randomly activate any curio in the game no matter what it is.
- Found a locked cabinet and you got a key, Compulsive activate.
- Find a pile of books. Curious activate and you get +25 stress
- Find a Confession Booth to remove 30 stress. Compulsive activate and you now gain 15 stress instead.

Getting Scientific is not that much of a problem. The problem is when control is taken away from you and mess up with the game because you can't control the heros action. Scientific might be bad for the hero, but Compulsive or Curious is bad for the entire game.

[Norton 360 for Gamers]

Originally posted by IAteItGuy:

I just had a character get love interest, deviant tastes, and the crimson curse by week 5. That last one's on me, though.

That's odd. I thought they fixed being able to get conflicting town stress relief quirks a few years ago.

[RopeDrink]

If it's not Kleptomania or Curios, I generally don't mind. Most stat-based quirks at the early game (versus base scaling numbers) are relatively inconsequential, except maybe -ACC (seeing as you're already ACC starved until you get trinkets or the guild), but that's not nearly as bad as being forced to watch your heroes interact with provisionless curios and either steal goodies or infect themselves with even more negatives.

Small prize goes to Imposter Syndrome (passing turns), and curio-specific interaction quirks like Tippler, etc, which have the same risks as Klepto/Curios, just against a more specific curio type. These are never good.

By comparison, having an ARB suffering from reduced melee damage, a melee suffering from reduced ranged damage, or even damage-related reductions themselves (while annoying) aren't nearly as detrimental when dealing with, say, level 0's and 1's. You obviously don't want them, but losing 1-X damage is not the end of the world. Those are the type of things I streamline off heroes once I have plenty of gold to burn and I know I'm keeping that particular hero.

[Gamefever]

Oh I did not even think about the curio's because for a lot of runs I dont bother with bringing enough materials to activate them "properly" anyway. Altogether the chances that a curio is a positive without a material to activate it is in our favor.

Passing turns without a Break trait setting in is pretty bad though.

I do my best to not get attached to the Hero's in this game since a lot can go side ways even when I do my best to mitigate that.

[RopeDrink]

You can do much and more. It's not uncommon for veterans to do no-death runs. It's the only way I play the game these days. While that adds a bit of tension into the mix, it often involves relying more on meta-play later on, which may not be terribly exciting for some people, but it's very possible to beat the game without losing a single hero once you know how.

Some people were mad enough to do torchless-stygian-no-death runs. I believe at least one person succeeded with that with visual proof. Dousing the torch is the equivalent of hard mode, so intentionally doing that under the added pressure of Stygian/Bloodmoon and deciding to restart after a single death is... not for everyone.

Altogether the chances that a curio is a positive without a material to activate it is in our favor.

It really isn't. There are quite a lot of curios you can safely open without anything, but there are infinitely more that are dangerous without them, or at best, not as rewarding even if there are no negatives (or inconsequential negatives that don't dissuade you from trying your luck). In those cases, it's still better to throw a provision at it, remove the negative and take the bigger reward.

This is doubly true for certain zones containing curios that can wipe Quirks, such as Cove Coral. Nobody should ever miss the opportunity for free negative-quirk removal, which I don't believe ever comes free except for a low chance using no provisions at a Confession Booth in the Ruins -- which typically rewards +Stress, a Negative Quirk, or nothing at all. You can take a chance, or slap some Holy Water on it for a nice, juicy stress-heal. This is worth considering when you already have a hero jacked up with Negative Quirks and there's a chance you might replace a bad one with something less awful even if it fails, but the majority of the rest require an item of some description.

Ultimately, the best profit comes from spending money to make money. Namely, taking plenty of provisions for curios (and combat). This helps you fill your inventory with goodies much faster. Granted, people are likely to be overflowing with goodies and micromanaging them near the end regardless, but better to have full bags early so you can just rotate whatever is more valuable and/or have a profit even if you need to retreat the dungeon for some reason.

It also means you have various combat aids as well. Bandages, Holy Water, Antivenom, Torches, Keys, etc.

[SortaLumy]

Originally posted by eheh:

Originally posted by IAteItGuy:

I just had a character get love interest, deviant tastes, and the crimson curse by week 5. That last one's on me, though.

That's odd. I thought they fixed being able to get conflicting town stress relief quirks a few years ago.

The character started with love interest and got deviant tastes from using the brothel. They probably fixed a character starting with those together, but didn't change stuff like that.

[Radio Star]

Perk? I'd say any perk that causes a character to activate a curio is in that category. Nothing like seeing a shambler alter, going 'maybe later', and your occultist going 'but what about now?'

The battle traits suck, but you can generally work around them with trinkets nad the like until you remove them. If I had to pick the worst from battle traits... the one that gives you a -10% to accuracy after the first round.

[skryble]

Fading, Curious, and Kleptomaniac are the worst.
Even having Bad Gambler + Known Cheat or any other 2 that prevent you from healing stress is ok with the right comp.

[Magni]

Forced interaction quirks are the worst. Honorary mentions for Fading and Antsy, though.