“Lost and found” is pointless!

[Koblasco]

This might be just a nitpick but after completing a playthrough I’m still baffled by how useless this event is compared to the other events you get after completing a quest.

So, in the base game there are 2 events for each area you can randomly get for completing a quest, right?

One buffs xp and dmg for next quest in the same area and the other gives you free ♥♥♥♥.
More specifically:

Ruins- free abbey
Weald- free sanitarium
Warrens- free supplies
Cove- free weapon upgrade


This essentially means that while the former kind of quest effects the game in some way (safer quest and less grind) the latter doesn’t actually impact the game (since it’s all stuff you can technically do anytime, it’s just that now it’s free) apart from saving money so most of their effectiveness is measured in monetary value.

Although, I must mention that if you’re broke or you’re playing on “hard mode/ng+/stygian/bloodmoon/howmanyfriggingnamesdoesyhismodehave???” where every cent matters, you’re not unlikely to save on supplies, abbey relief or trips to the kleptospanker so in these cases they do have their practical utility even though I still think that it’s saving money that makes these quests appealing.

This is where things get dumbfounding, let’s start by comparing the events’ utility if you were to use base facilities, both in terms of advantages and money gained (by not spending it):

•Base abbey
-2 to 3 afflictions cured/prevented.
-2k to 4k worth of gold.
(1 chance out of 2 that caretaker will occupy an abbey slot).

•Base sanitarium
-1 positive quirk locked and 1 negative quirk removed.
-1 to 3 diseases removed (random chance to wipe out more than one disease).
-10k worth of gold.
(Plus, removing a quirk or disease that cripples you in combat or forces your character to touch stuff also has the benefit of saving you hp/stress damage and getting you more loot either from actually being able to use the correct item on ♥♥♥♥ or simply stop Reynaud from being Reynaud).

•Bumper crop
-Not facility-related so there’s nothing to upgrade but let’s just say that lots of food, torches, and shovels keeps HP high and prevents stress (especially thanks to those delicious banquets during medium or even long quests, YUM!), while again, other supplies help in battle and let you interact with stuff which means even more gold, heirlooms and trinkets.
-I don’t even know how much gold is worth, probably around 20k, I guess.

•Base blacksmith
-...
-Oh right, let’s ALSO add the fact that base blacksmith is useless to balance this incredibly OP event.

Let’s be a little bit generous then...

•Rank 2 blacksmith
-Like... 2 more DMG/CRIT points... for 1 character only btw...
-750 gold saved. NOT EVEN 1K!


Do you notice something wrong? Well, let’s also compare the events with fully upgraded facilities just to be sure.

Note: in terms of money I won’t count any gold discount upgrade since it depends on the each individual player and I have to choose a standard so why not use the base prices anyway.

Anyway, here we go:

•Max abbey
-SEVEN TO NINE FREAKING afflictions cured/prevented.
-I’m not entirely sure tbh... with high level heroes 15k gold saved for sure, probably even up to 20k/30k.
(At this point the town crier will also occupy slots so you might have up to 2 empty abbey slots).

•Max sanitarium, oh boy.
-3 positive quirks locked and 3 negative ones removed.
-3 to 9 diseases removed.
-About 30k worth of gold.

•Bumper crop.
-Still good.

•Max blacksmith
-Nothing changed.
-4k worth of gold.


See what’s wrong now?
Let’s recap quickly:

All saints day’s free stress relief is a GODSEND (hehe get it?) plus it also saves you quite some money.

Bumper crop makes the next quest a piece of cake (perfect especially for bosses) and saves you a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of money.

Caregivers convention OH MY GOD is so important.
Removing locked negative stats quirks and locking positive ones can be fundamental in battles while removing quirks that make people touch ♥♥♥♥ also indirectly nets you valuable items or less stress (since when a hero touches stuff on their own you lose the chance to use the appropriate item which guarantees you supplies, gold or even precious heirlooms on top of avoiding the chance to catch bleed/blight/stress/A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ DISEASE which might result in even more money lost to remedy the situation.)

In other words:
1)Gain fortune-changing, life-saving, tide-turning benefits.
2) Save on lots of gold.

Now, what do the blacksmith events give you?

1) A tiny negligible base stat improvement for only ONE hero.
2) Saving from 1k to 4k gold AT MOST!


Honestly WTF? I seriously can’t wrap my head around it!

Not only did designers think this event was ok when it was first implemented but it also has never been touched throughout all these years of updates and changes AND on top of that they decided that you can’t upgrade both armor and weapon... of a single character mind you. Apparently that’s too broken, I guess.

Why is that?

This event is completely inferior in every way to those of other areas.

It doesn’t make ANY SENSE at all that “All saints day” and “Caregivers convention” get progressively better at a reasonable rate (Saints starts ok and becomes damn good while Caregivers starts great and becomes amazing) but “Lost and found” just... starts ♥♥♥♥ and stays lepe- I mean ♥♥♥♥, actually no I do mean leper.

It’s so bad that even with a max blacksmith it can barely keep up with base abbey saints day and is unambiguosly outclassed by base sanitarium convention.

Let’s not mention Bumper crop out of pity.


I know I’m being repeatitive but I really am puzzled by such an absurd design oversight.

The fix is also so easy and obvious that I’m probably just gonna mod it myself.

Basically, to keep this event somewhat on pace with the other quest-spawned events, it should obviously let you upgrade 4 weapons instead of one since an entire team upgraded is an actual noticeable advantage and the math checks out:

•Base abbey (which is the least economically advantageous of the three).
-2k to 4k worth of gold.

•4 weapons Rank 2 blacksmith.
-3k worth of gold.

•Max abbey.
-About 15k/20k worth of gold if I’m correct.

•4 weapons max blacksmith
-16k worth of gold.

See? It’s so clear that this is what the event should have always been!


I’m no game designer so I don’t how the development process works but the only explaination I can give myself is that events were designed by different people and nobody gave a ♥♥♥♥ about supervising them.

The only other possibilty is that SOMEHOW one or more people were responsible for all the quests and thought:


“Hmm, the treatment ward? The most expensive treatment in the game? Maybe locking/removing only 1 quirk for 1 hero seems fair. Nah, what am I saying? 6 quirks fixed in an instant? Seems balanced to me! Actually, I think it’s STILL not enough! Let’s make the medical ward free as well, why not?”

“Stress management? Literally the entire premise of our game? 1 hero relieved is not enough, a whole section is also not enough.
Stress relief for everyone! No worrying about making boring thoughtful choices!”

“Supplies? That stuff on which depend the lives of adventurers? Making only food, torches and shovels free seems enough to ensure the success of the next quest but that’s lame! Everything for free! No need to carefully ration your space!”

“But a small stats upgrade? So small that it barely makes a difference? That’s too broken, man! Can’t let an entire team have a slighty easier time than usual! This quest should be restricted to 1 hero only! And you can’t upgrade both weapon and armor!”

“Yeah, overall I think I did a pretty good job so far!”

Nah, that’s way too implausible.


What makes this situation even more puzzling is that apparently no one actually cares about this as I didn’t find anyone talking about it.
In fact, at first I thought I was hallucinating or something since it’s so surreal that something that bothers me so much went completely unnoticed by literally everyone else on the planet (for 2 years no less!).

Can anyone explain why nobody is bothered in the least?
Because I honestly have no clue.

By now, I’ve seen threads and discussions about every single aspect of this game but it’s complete radio silence on this topic.

Seriously guys, why?! It’s so WEIRD!

[LaserGuy]

I think your numbers are a bit off here. The only one that is really out-of-line in terms of value compared to the others is Caregiver Convention.

All Saint's Day is probably not ever going to be worth more than 3-4k simply because you don't ever need that many people in stress relief at any one time. Generally you're looking at 1-2 people in stress relief per week, and with all Saint's you can maybe squeeze in a couple people who wouldn't be worth treating normally (say, someone with 30 stress).

Bumper Crop is worth ~12k if you're doing a long mission and buy basically everything (assuming 36 food, 24 torch, 8 shovels and one stack of everything else), though most of those provisions are going to be wasted. If you just treat it as "the next mission is free", you're looking at practical value of somewhere in the range of 7k for long, 5k for medium, 3k for short. Maybe getting up to the 10k range for the ultra-long CC missions, I guess.

Lost and Found is a flat 4k bonus, which is roughly in line with a typical All Saint's or Bumper Crop for a medium dungeon.

Caregiver's Convention tops out at 37.5k just for quirks (3x 12.5k lock/remove), and that value is fairly realistic since it's common enough that you basically don't need to bother upgrading the Sanitarium to reduce quirk removal costs at all, you can just add more slots.

I think the reason nobody talks about it is because they're worried that RH would nerf caregiver's convention :P

[Koblasco]

Thank you for answering!
Most importantly thank you for providing more "practical" values as opposed to my hypothetical "best case scenarios" ones, especially Bumper Crop as I didn't consider at all the different values for different quest lenghts.
That said, I think I need to clarify a couple of things.
I am very slow at typing therefore it can become a tedious and frustrating chore to me so I try to be as brief as possible but sometimes that means I don't elaborate on important details, so let me remedy.


I wrote this post not because this event was impacting my game in some way, far from it actually.
I never cared about these events very much since, as i already said, they don't even "technically" change anything and they're just a small monetary compensation.

I honestly just wanted to rant on something that seems to me incredibily stupid from a design and thought process.
I know this is petty but this is how my character is, I just really hate when people do incredibly dumb things, like when people can be normally super stingy but sometimes throw away incredible amounts of money for silly things (like cigarettes and alcohol) and then complain about how they're always broke.
I'm not excluded from this, I actually be very self-critical whenever I make even the simplest mistakes but now I'm digressing too much, back to the game.

By now I completely abandoned the idea that these events were designed with any thought about their impact on the game and more as a "Free ♥♥♥♥ for once, hope you're happy! :D".
Basically with the same mentality of the random events, just a small little gift to shake things up which I'm not fond of.

Yes, you can do whatever you want with random events since you never "do" anything to "deserve" them, there no cause-effect, they just "happen" so you can anything with it, they might be pointless, just a joke or even detrimental.
But when you design some events specifically as rewards then you have to put some thought into it.

One thing is "Oh, 2 additional Lepers haha nice joke, this game is so funny." and another thing is "Oh man I am feeling so rewarded and motivated for doing a task... except when the reward is not proportional to my efforts, you're not funny anymore game!"


Again, I just am annoyed at the "intentions" behind the design more than anything else, for example:

Let's compare Caregivers convention and Lost and found since their contrast is more evident.
So someone makes treatments free without considering whether or not it would be correct to limit quirks to only positive or negative ones or the number of slots available.
Ok fair enough, they probably considered the event strong to an acceptable degree and didn't look into it any further.
Seems acceptable so far but NOPE! They go through the effort of also giving you free cures just in case, which means that they honestly thought that IT WAS NOT ENOUGH, believe it or not.
Same applies for Bumper Crop and All saints Day, they just think "free everything" and don't care about it.

Only when they look at small stats upgrades they suddenly get worried about balance and start acting all serious and thoughtful, putting absurd amounts of restrictions and making Lost and found near useless.


In a nutshell this is the core of my complaints, I cannot bring myself to grasp the logic that made designers worry about one aspect of their game but completely ignore other similarly or even more important ones, that's it really... just wanted to vent a pet peeve of mine :/



Now that I got that out of the way, let's briefly talk about numbers again.


As I said in the begining I think your values make more sense, it can be a mistake to be too hypothetical.
I mean by the same logic I used, death resist should be the most important stat in the game but most of us know that statistically speed, dmg, acc and resists save lives more reliably.
In the same way, you can't always rely on getting the maximum uselfulness out of the quest events:

-You won't usually have more than 4 heroes highly stressed.
-Your next dungeon won't always be DD or CC.
-Actually Caregivers is always really bloody good since there's always people to treat and it's very expensive from the start.
-You won't always have level 5 heroes lying around waiting for their final upgrade.


But here's the thing, even with more grounded numbers Lost and found still gets outclassed:

-All saints day: from 2k (2 low level heroes) to 8k (4 high level heroes) worth of gold.
-Bumper crop: from 3k (short dungeon) to 10k (DD or CC) worth of gold.
-Caregivers convention: from 12k (2 locked quirks on 1 low level hero) up to (I double checked numbers) 60k!!! (6 locked quirks on 3 high level heroes, 2 each) worth of gold, I didn't take disease into consideration this time because they're less reliable to find than quirks and can easily be wiped out by camping skills or the Crimson Curse, anyway.
-Lost and found: from 750 (first weapon upgrade) to 4k (last weapon upgrade) worth of gold.

Yup, both the minimum and maximum value are still inferior.
Even with the updated numbers this quest is still the worst although not as bad as I initially thought.
Maybe a fairer adjustment would be to let you upgrade both weapon and armor but still of a single hero.
That way the value would be somewhat on par with the other quests (with the exception of the Convention since it's on a whole other league):
-From 1.5k to 8k worth of gold.


tl;dr: the way Lost and Found is handled is dumb, devs decided for no (apparent) reason to nerf since inception the weakest quest event while leaving the others untouched and the playerbase doesn't seem to care either which mildly annoys me.

I think that's all, you tell me if I missed anything.
Man, that felt good to vent to be honest.
Thinking about it, maybe the reason this particular design incompetence frustrates me so much is probably because everything else about the game is so brilliantly fine-tuned that it sticks out even more in contrast.

By the way, I don't think people would be smart enough to not talk about this out of fear that RH takes action.
I mean, there's people constantly flooding threads by asking if saving Reynaud and Dismas with From beyond affects the Old road achievement instead of looking it up themselved for like... 5 seconds so I personally can't believe that.


I reiterate that I'm surprised nobody cares about it; I can excuse new players on their first playthrough who are too busy focusing on other aspects of the game to notice it but veteran players who did multiple playthroughs, have hundreds if not thousands of hours of playtime and constantly discuss about the impact of every single little aspect of the game?

It just doesn't make any sense at all yo me so that will still haunt me until I find an answer but at least writing down my thoughts and having someone more or less confirm them reassures me that I'm not crazy, so at least there's that. :)

[OnceUponaTime]

you're not wrong…
thing is, i think that events are like a bonus, and while sure, one can consider their a reward on the priority scale to be higher or lower, they aren't to be expected. Yes, if i get the event for free stress relief and have lots stressed, or especially the one which gives free treatments, it's usually enough to make me take that dungeon (unless an awesome trinket is a reward for something else).

It's nice to be like, hey i wanna do this dungeon, oh, what's that i get a free weapon too? nice. Hardly is this event very appealing, but those 750...well, there are enough times when that's made a difference during the first coupla weeks, I hat being like 2-3 hundred short for provisions, or not being able to upgrade something cause im less than 500 short.
:D

so i think, here's the main thing. The other events being so good seems to have (seriously no offense I just don't know how else to say it) spoiled you in a certain way, like, they shouldn't be taken for granted…

Then again, this is coming from an amateur player that's never played the game fully through and you mentioned u have lots of hours so chances are (though i prolly won't get so hooked by this game) once i've done my first playthrough or played a couple hundred hours, I'll end up agreein with ya. :D necro for rant's sake :)