Renowned Explorers: International Society

Renowned Explorers: International Society

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carl8000 Oct 15, 2018 @ 10:26am
I need this explained to me
I've looked around for advice, I only ever see (good) general advice though, which I follow. I'm fine with the combat, I always visit the majority of map nodes (sometimes my 2nd campaign goes sideways if I get unlucky), but the best I've done is 10,700 with Victor. I had a couple others that were close-ish, but the rest are like 5-6k or they're runs where I can't afford good equipment and rush the 5th campaign on a 2 star just for the achievement.

I've been going through all the characters sequentially and I'm near the end, but whatever strategies are required to win with anything other than a Friendly/Gold set-up elude me, so here's my request: I'm about to start a run with Yvonne--how would you approach this? I understand that there's an element of randomness, but please be as specific as possible. It seems like a Devious/Status approach would be used, and I know I won't be able to raise enough money for equipment to go to Shangri-la with what I always do.

Tl/dr, I need someone to hold my hand and teach me some advanced strategy
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Showing 1-12 of 12 comments
The BlackVision Oct 15, 2018 @ 3:52pm 
The best way is to plan it out in advance. I'm assuming you've got the DLCs - please disregard this advice if not ;)

Yvonne makes the most out of encounters - so make sure you're going to locations that have a lot of them and pick up the entourage for encounters earlier rather than later to maximise your gains from them: Andes has a large amount and is decent for status or you can go Highlands instead to maximise the worth of your campaign tokens - just go for the treasure pools that increase campaign and you can more or less forget all the unique pools for treasures.

Hungary usually doesn't have too muc for encounters, but on the other hand, the Portrait treasure there is an absolute must for a high scoring status run (you can still do very well without it, but it'll really push your score up with it) - if you do pick Hungary, it's also worth collecting at least some secrets from the treasures in Hungary as it'll be a welcome boost to your early resources.

Beyond that, you'll want someone who's a good campaign roller and kit them out with 4 Quick Thinking, 6 Beguiler, and 6 Diplomacy, and consider 6 survivalist (you only get the bonus from Rio, not the Stockholm campaign bonus, so it's less vital) and may want to consider tactics (if not on them, on someone else) - you probably won't manage *all* of them on one character, but the more you cover with them, the better. Prioritise good defence gear on them for their rolls and even better if they're a Scout as they can make the best all round stats for rolling.

For your roller to be successful, they also need the entourage to back them up - that starts with the campaign tokens per 4 levels of (insert skill here) in Stockholm - but only get those when you'll be able to start making use of them immediately, otherwise invest your campaign into the Madrid extra tokens per Encounter specialists and the lobbyists that'll make the campaign tokens worth more.

Also aim for 6 in Diplomacy, Beguiler and (potentially) Survivalist in your planning for the last expedition - those are the ones you can get in Rio that earn +2 campaign per roll.

Whichever 4th star expedition you go to (probably Trans for campaign), ensure you pick up the + renown % for status treasure(s) - these multipliers really make a huge difference. Besides that, maximise your income of status and renown for the final expedition: it's worth a lot more than the other expeditions, and not just because of the other bonuses you've built up - that final expedition receiving +100% is a huge bonus.

Also try to plan your campfire cards in advance - which character ones you want to use and which crew cards. Yvonne's secret buff card is invaluable given how each secrets are to collect using the Psychology Research tree, and her personal story can be combined well with History's renown bonuses per helper entourage, though History may not serve you as well as Observations just because of the +50% renown from status you can take from Observations.

As for crew members, there's lots who can support Yvonne. My personal favourite is Kiwi, since she's great for Devious, a fantastic roller for almost any crew and resource and is great both in encounters and for the long-term strategy, but she's far from the only option.

Do make sure that you have all the Wits checks covered if you're going Highlands, and have the relevant skills for Andes if you choose to go there (see the Treasure Guide for details).

Lastly, for the best scores, you need to earn a lot of resources early on in order to invest them for the long-game, resulting in a big snowball effect: the more you get early, the more you get out of the investment at the end, in terms of research from science, entourage (helpers and specialists) and gear from gold - even small bonuses add up to a lot: one helper bought an expedition earlier will give far more than when they're bought the next expedition.

For the tl:dr: plan your route, campfire cards, researchs and method in advance for maximum points!
charles_watkins Oct 15, 2018 @ 4:11pm 
Hi Carl,
I was once in the same place. I had played for about 6 months before I was able to break 10K and couldn't imagine how some players were putting up their high scores. I still don't know how some of them do it, but I did manage to work my way up to the 20K plateau over another 6 months.

There are few online videos that show expert play and quite a bit of advice here in the discussion group. You can also study contest results to see what's possible.

The first thing I learned was resource optimization -- stacking bonuses to make a chosen resource really pay off. I studied Liort's Guide and made plans to get the best stuff. I came to appreciate the value of Helpers.

Then I started trying strategies built around my captain's special. I tried about all of them -- and others are succeeding with some where I don't (e.g. Anna) -- but had my 20K runs with Phailin, Dolores, Harry, Molly, and Yu.

To get over the top, I saw I needed to capitalize on the big scoring opportunities such as the Yeti photo and some of the campfire cards. This often had implications for party composition, equipment, and development.

In general, I found each measure of improvement brought me additional resources that in turn accelerated advancement. Before long, I was taking in more gold than I could spend, so I started working more for status and research.

Good luck getting a mentor. The BlackVision has been a big help to me. But a lot of the fun is figuring things out yourself, so enjoy the ride. Cheers.
carl8000 Oct 15, 2018 @ 4:36pm 
Hmmm, I'm missing something conceptually for sure, I feel like I do the things you guys are saying (minus the giving one person all those skills, I generally don't have enough status/money for that) but I'm not executing. I looked for expert videos but didn't see any, maybe I'll look harder.
The BlackVision Oct 15, 2018 @ 5:50pm 
The skills are more of a 'work your way up' thing, and getting *all* of them probably isn't plausible, but it depends who you're doing it on: Kiwi is in a good starting place for Survivalist, can learn a beguiler perk off Yvonne using her storycard and grab the Rose for 3 perks, making the 4th one from Stockholm for 4 beguiler pretty early on, diplomat she can get almost entirely just from the Trinket in the secret shop if you plan to unlock it, otherwise you can focus on Quick Thinker, which you've got the Rope for 2, the entourage for 3 and can get a 4th off another crew card without too much trouble (but stop at 4, no point going higher for that).

The main stalling point for most people at that point is earning enough early on - make sure you invest in Helpers early and get the token generation up nice and strong. Yvonne will gather some just from her perk, which helps, but it's more of a late-game generator than early-game. The nice thing with Yvonne lead is that even with terrible luck on the rolls, you'll still generate a lot of tokens just from encounters.

You can also make use of Maria as a crew member - not only is she a powerful damage dealer in encounters, her card is a very quick way of giving Beguiler ranks and getting early tokens from encounters - you may even want to start off friendly and switch to devious in the second expedition or so to make full use of her card (and get the encounter tokens to make Yvonne's journalists worth even more to collect), though if you're doing that, you may prefer to go into anthropology research at least a little, though priority should probably still lie on Obs and Psych for the renown bonus.
carl8000 Oct 15, 2018 @ 8:19pm 
Both of the strategies you laid out in your 2nd post never would have occurred to me (basically using someone else as your Beguiler when you're captaining Yvonne), those are the sorts of things I haven't been trying, I'll definitely give it a try
The BlackVision Oct 16, 2018 @ 12:50am 
Good luck!
DHBTVS Oct 16, 2018 @ 6:56pm 
As someone who only recently broke my first 10k game, I also want to point out- don't underestimate the value of stats when it comes to rolls. most rolls not only have a skill, but a stat and a class that help it. usually after the first island, the 150 for the second tier of defense item is way better than 1 first tier defense item on each person. Or books. Gloves are less important since very few rolls use attack.

1 perk is +20% on one skill roll. 1 150g defense item is +15% on a whole family of rolls,, and +5% on another family. this allows you to focus your perks on getting bonus tokens rather than just winning rolls, or focus on non roll skill special options (like athlete/naturalist for the eggs and orchid in the Caribbean)
carl8000 Oct 16, 2018 @ 8:27pm 
^Very good point. I think that and what TBV was saying really highlighted what I was missing, and I was definitely not playing the right cards either (I almost never used characters main story cards, I didn't really understand what they did). My treasure bonus selection math was a little off too I guess--I'd always prioritize token upgrades over bonuses that produced more tokens, so I wasn't getting these +20 token spins that you guys were (but my tokens were worth like 20% more. Yay?)
The BlackVision Oct 16, 2018 @ 11:25pm 
Yeah, the cards can make a huge difference - and not just with their immediate effects: it's worth bearing in mind the perk gains from some: Charles' card, for example, is actually rather underwhelming for it's effect, but the fact that you can, with absolutely certainty, trigger 2 negative perks after 1 expedition by ensuring he doesn't have enough Diplomat can make a big difference.

As for equipment, yeah, defencive items tend to be the best investment. Particularly on your roller who should generally have priority on the best stuff. In comparison, offencive gear you only really want one character's to be good until uou can afford proper upgrades anyway - so long as you're surviving encounters, doesn't matter if you're chipping away slowly at enemies so long as you've got one person who can heal effectively and/or offload damage on AoE/high single-target attacks.

Trinkets come last(ish), and are only for propping up the perks you need to trigger token generation entourage - a couple you'll want to decide on for your final expedition: whichever perks you need and are hardest to collect for that particular character, then just use other trinkets to ensure you're getting the most tokens you can.

Some exceptions can occur - don't undervalue the Bork, for example. It's the cheapest +10 armour you'll find to boost defencive stats, and everyone can use it, as well as being available comparitively early and completely invaluable on Ivan, for example (see his card) - it's my go-to if there's no immediately obvious perks or trinkets for a crew member. Even 10 armour (or 20 if you stack them!) goes a long way, both for encounters and for rolling.

Other exceptions include the expensive stat boosting ones: the Boomerang on Scouts, the History Book for high Speech crew, the Biscuit Box when going up against bosses that dodge (basically Amir and the Raptor Queen) or when using 'Try to' skills on characters regularly - though this is still better to avoid in general anyway due to the loss in power)

I do recommend using my guide for items: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=928074790 for the breakdown of perks and stats at the bottom too (and wouldn't complain if you rated it either!) ;)
The BlackVision Oct 16, 2018 @ 11:33pm 
Oh, and when I mentioned Scouts being rollers, that applies to Phailin too since she uses Boots. Her defence stats aren't as strong as some scouts, but she's absolutely viable as a roller)
carl8000 Oct 17, 2018 @ 9:44am 
Well, I finished a crew of Yvonne/Kiwi/Maria, and tried your suggestion of stacking Kiwi. I had Beguiler 6/QT 4/Surv 5/Diplo 6 on her (diplomat only for the last expedition though), but I made almost no money (Yvonne had 'Good' gear, Maria had 'Decent', Kiwi had max stuff) so I ended up wussing out at the end.

Anyway, my main goal was to learn new strategies, so mission accomplished, thanks+
The BlackVision Oct 17, 2018 @ 10:05am 
Glad you enjoyed it! If cash was an issue, can try Kiwi's card early on so she's earning both collect and studies for those particular rolls, and getting a couple of the cheap helpers early on.
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