School of Life achievement

[ElPrezCBF]

How do I get the School of Life achievement? I taught Ivano to grow veggies, cook, set traps, make consumables, and make filters and water. What lesson is he missing?

[Kierk]

Cigarettes... there are a lot of things you can teach them with an improved herbal workshop.

http://www.playstationtrophies.org/game/this-war-of-mine-the-little-ones/trophy/132147-Note--The-school-of-life.html

[ElPrezCBF]

Thanks Kierk. I usually neglect upgrading the improved herbal workshop because it's often late game by then anyway. On a separate note, the kid karma thing is crazy. All it took was for Ivano to get very ill once and ignoring one door knock, even without getting hurt once, stealing and killing innocents. He was often well fed and even had couple times content especially when sharing the bed with Henrik and had all his toys.

[Kierk]

Yes, like I said in the other thread, kids are very affected by anything bad happening inside the shelter. So, just getting very ill could be enough for them to not be able to get the good ending. They don't really care if you fail or ignore a visit though, but get a lot of "points" for succeeding.

I'm not sure if it's even possible to get a good ending without doing a perfect playthrough, and by that I mean giving them meds as soon as they get sick, bandages even when a little hurt, and keep them happy all the time. Guess it's a challenge on his own, wasting so much resources just for them, while keeping the whole group alive and well xD

[ElPrezCBF]

I guess the kid is like the prince of the home. It's ironic that he's the only one who gets content the most throughout the game, always well fed when feeding day arrives and gets spoken to and all his toys, yet gets a karma ending over just one bad experience even though he was never sad 99% of the game. While his fellow adult survivors get wounded and very hungry yet all get happy endings.

About perfect runs, I think a lot depends on the "RNG" (if that's the right word to use) on whether the adult or child gets hurt/sick at the start of every cold day, assuming you did everything right. And even "right" depends on whether it's worth sacrificing the lives of everyone else through sub-optimal decisions just for the sake of giving the child a good ending. From my experience with all the default child scenarios, I'd say a perfect run might be possible in a default scenario if the RNG is in your favor. But if you customize to start off with all the worst possible settings and characters you can get, I'd say that would be unlikely if not impossible.

[Cetoiscini]

Originally posted by Kierk:

Cigarettes... there are a lot of things you can teach them with an improved herbal workshop.

http://www.playstationtrophies.org/game/this-war-of-mine-the-little-ones/trophy/132147-Note--The-school-of-life.html

That person got something wrong though. You can teach kids to make bandages, but not medications.

And anyway, I'm currently doing yet another run through all the more challenging scenarios. Survived Arica/Ivano/Henrik with happy endings for everyone, but couldn't do the same with Iskra in the scenario with her and her father (got raided twice before Anton arrived on day 6, plus Christo got severely wounded once during combat). So yeah, after all this I'd say getting the happy endings for the children requires more luck than it should.

[ElPrezCBF]

Thanks Cetoiscini. I'll make a point to upgrade my herbal workshop next time to try get this achievement. Think I mentioned this before. As annoying as karma endings are, I'd still consider it a perfect run if it's the result of bad RNG than any wrong moves I made. I might custom a really crazy scenario if I'm in the mood for it.

[Cetoiscini]

Originally posted by Anntwel:

Thanks Cetoiscini. I'll make a point to upgrade my herbal workshop next time to try get this achievement. Think I mentioned this before. As annoying as karma endings are, I'd still consider it a perfect run if it's the result of bad RNG than any wrong moves I made. I might custom a really crazy scenario if I'm in the mood for it.

The other official scenarios with kids are fine because I'm at least able to control the impact RNG has, which makes it fairly easy to get the happy endings for the kids.

Iskra/Christo (that playthrough in particular), however, is extremely mean. No one can guard the house so it's all up to RNG to decide if Iskra gets hurt or not. The third survivor (and when they join) is also random. Like, the early game is 100% RNG-based and you can do nothing about it.

[ElPrezCBF]

How much control you have over RNG varies from player to player assuming you got all your basics covered. If the bad RNG comes at a favorable time, there may still be room for some "sub-optimal" moves without affecting your long term survival strategy much. But this does not happen all the time. The default child scenarios are more forgiving in this aspect, which is why it's possible for perfect runs in them. I might have missed some minor details needed to get a good child ending because of unfamiliarity over their exact threshold levels before karma endings kick in. But I'm not fanatical about "perfect runs" as explained earlier. Suffice to say, I'd have to be pretty fanatic to get overly upset over one child's karma ending when the other three adult survivors got happy ones and the child was often content throughout the game lol.

[Kierk]

Them getting wounded is what the problem is. They have the same "trauma" than Bruno/Emilia for getting sick or hungry, which is fine, but get insta-depressed just for being injured...

I get they are more than affected than adults, and but it's balanced out by the fact that the treshold to get a bad ending is three times higher than adults.. but getting a bad ending just for a small wound is crazy. Anything else is fine though, because I'm sure war can be quite traumatizing to kids.

[ElPrezCBF]

My point is RNG effects should not be underestimated and are independent of the player's experience level. Depending on your scenario and settings, a bad early streak will likely lead to a child karma ending. The RNG effects and timings may vary even if you replay the same scenario again. The player has "control" over bad RNG only as far as it comes at a time that does not greatly compromise the overall survival of everyone just for the sake of making the child have a happy ending. Beyond that, RNG has absolute rule regardless of your experience. Anyway my goal is not to get perfect runs but to try various extreme custom scenarios and get the remaining 4 achievements.