How do you survive the mid-game days?

[Kasta]

I'm currently close to Day 30, but have found it difficult to progress without a Meltdown happening on Aleph Abnormalities (which are VERY luck based for my characters to not go insane on). I have one character in each department, where I currently have 7. Most of them have 4 100 stats, though a few aren't quite there yet. I heard that you aren't meant to beat the game on your first run, and should restart the game to Day 1 with your observation level so that you can get farther. But how would that strategy help? Is it a legitimate strategy? How should I handle the game now that a Meltdown can happen on an Aleph and ruin my run because my employees went insane (I have CENSORED, and he breaches if my character goes insane, so even if I were to save my employee, I would have an impossible to suppress Abnormality in the facility).

Thank You for reading!

[CarThief]

Hm, so you have like, 7 employees, total? Sounds kinda, uh, ineffecient. And you *definitely* need more employees for some types of supressions. (And in a sense it's safer for other reasons too, to have some disposable bodies.)

If you ask me, it'd be more fruitful to either spend your LOB points on hiring and beefing up employees (my favourite is to spend like, 14ish points to hire and beef an employee up to 4HP/4SP, while the rest is at 3 due to a uh, special bonus), or alternatively hire employees and don't spend points on em, and just have them work as much as possible before a really bad Ordeal appears to make them level up better.

As for Censored, uh... He's kinda tough. You NEED black-resistant armor, like, pretty GOOD black-resistant armor. The "Of Love and Hate" armor is a good WAW armor for it, alternatively, any black-resistant ALEPH armor works, too. Seeing/working on Censored automatically applies the Terrified status (which normally only appears if an Level 1 Employee witnesses like, an WAW or ALEPH abnormality), instantly draining the majority of their SP, and since they're in a containment unit, you can't restore it via bullets or such. Even if that employee is level 5, it still applies it - i guess it's kinda Censored's special trick, to freak people out no matter what.
With some luck, the black resistance is enough to preserve the remaining SP while they work on Censored (whom deals black damage, hence the black-resistant armor).

Well, at this rate, if you don't have the equipment to handle Censored, yeah, you may wanna restart. Same goes if you where to meet other abnormalities who are nigh-unmanagable with your current resources.
Though, did you do the missions? You might notice Core Supressions are mentioned to become available if enough missions are completed and other requirements, so if you can do those, then it helps a lot to do before restarting the run, as you keep the benefits!

Though if you've been building up LOB points you could also just hire and beef up employees big-time (may wanna skip boosting Justice this way, as it's just too expensive, better off training them via lots of repression work), and keep going that way for a bit longer.

If you do decide to restart, you keep everything (including gear, unlocks, information, etc) but your employees and LOB points, those are reset to the status they where at which day you reset to (if you restart back to day 1, LOB/employees are wiped, if you use memory repository, you're dumped at the nearest checkpoint with how your LOB points/employees where at the time).
Sometimes loading a checkpoint is a great way to avoid a bad abnormality pick, provided the checkpoint brings you back far enough to undo the selection of said abnormality. Beats having to restart entirely if you want to keep going.
(It makes a checkpoint every 5 days, so day 1, 6, 11, 16, 21, etc.)

Oh, and yeah, you're not so much meant to beat the game in the first run, although it's possible if you know how and plan ahead. It's highly recommended to restart the run atleast 1-2 times to get better gear, do more core supressions, get more abnormality info unlocked, etc.
It gets easier/faster anyway, with the more you unlock, so it's no big deal, at worst a tad grindy compared to some other games.

[Grim Purrr~urut]

Make sure that Agents which are going to Alephs have at least WAW quality of armor or higher, that they have Fortitude and Prudence at 5 and Temperance at 4+.

Censored is pretty cruel one. However, special ability of Censored weapon procs even during work (aka heals back 40% of damage taken). And WAW or Aleph armor with good black defense (0.5 or lower should be great) is required.

One Sin is healing SP for everyone in same department, including containment units.

Child of the Galaxy is healing HP and SP for token holder even during their work on other Abnormalities.

Flesh Idol, Express Train to Hell, Whitenight - they all heal HP and SP for everyone in facility, including ones who are working inside the containment units. But they all have high price to pay if managed poorly. Personally I was using Flesh Idol to be able to work with Whitenight at all. Those were cruel times (until I was saved by Bird of Judgement armor).

You Must Be Happy machine can give you extra SP as well.

Prophecy of Skin can help temporary raise SP (if you are facing black damage afterwards and not dealing with white).

Parasyte Tree spores will restore SP slowly even during work on other Abnormalities.

To ease work on Censored specifically try to get EGO gifts from other abnormalities which are giving bonus SP.

If you can't work with Censored at all - you can cheese it next way - when day already ended, put there Agent to work and right before it dies or goes insane just press "end day" button. This will count the Boxes you already collected, so you can unlock info and buy weapon.

Other way to cheeze is to move every agent to another department and then press special work "Sacrifice" of Censored. It will take random person from same department (and there is no Agents, so it will be clerk), kill it and restore Counter to 2.

7 Agents is pretty low quantity and can cost you restarts of days later on.

Restarting from day 1 is nice choice after you finished collecting your current WAW and Aleph weapons and armor (or can't proceed anymore). You will save all your progress with missions, unlocks and gear by restarting from day 1. Do the quests!

[Kasta]

Originally posted by Grim Purrr~urut:

Make sure that Agents which are going to Alephs have at least WAW quality of armor or higher, that they have Fortitude and Prudence at 5 and Temperance at 4+.

Censored is pretty cruel one. However, special ability of Censored weapon procs even during work (aka heals back 40% of damage taken). And WAW or Aleph armor with good black defense (0.5 or lower should be great) is required.

One Sin is healing SP for everyone in same department, including containment units.

Child of the Galaxy is healing HP and SP for token holder even during their work on other Abnormalities.

Flesh Idol, Express Train to Hell, Whitenight - they all heal HP and SP for everyone in facility, including ones who are working inside the containment units. But they all have high price to pay if managed poorly. Personally I was using Flesh Idol to be able to work with Whitenight at all. Those were cruel times (until I was saved by Bird of Judgement armor).

You Must Be Happy machine can give you extra SP as well.

Prophecy of Skin can help temporary raise SP (if you are facing black damage afterwards and not dealing with white).

Parasyte Tree spores will restore SP slowly even during work on other Abnormalities.

To ease work on Censored specifically try to get EGO gifts from other abnormalities which are giving bonus SP.

If you can't work with Censored at all - you can cheese it next way - when day already ended, put there Agent to work and right before it dies or goes insane just press "end day" button. This will count the Boxes you already collected, so you can unlock info and buy weapon.

Other way to cheeze is to move every agent to another department and then press special work "Sacrifice" of Censored. It will take random person from same department (and there is no Agents, so it will be clerk), kill it and restore Counter to 2.

7 Agents is pretty low quantity and can cost you restarts of days later on.

Restarting from day 1 is nice choice after you finished collecting your current WAW and Aleph weapons and armor (or can't proceed anymore). You will save all your progress with missions, unlocks and gear by restarting from day 1. Do the quests!

Thank you so much for all your help! I never considered all the unique ways you mentioned for recovering SP! I more or less prayed for good RNG on success rate, but didn't think to use other abnormalities to do so! I really appreciate you taking the time to type all that out, it will definitely be useful! Thank you!!

[Kasta]

Originally posted by CarThief:

Hm, so you have like, 7 employees, total? Sounds kinda, uh, ineffecient. And you *definitely* need more employees for some types of supressions. (And in a sense it's safer for other reasons too, to have some disposable bodies.)

If you ask me, it'd be more fruitful to either spend your LOB points on hiring and beefing up employees (my favourite is to spend like, 14ish points to hire and beef an employee up to 4HP/4SP, while the rest is at 3 due to a uh, special bonus), or alternatively hire employees and don't spend points on em, and just have them work as much as possible before a really bad Ordeal appears to make them level up better.

As for Censored, uh... He's kinda tough. You NEED black-resistant armor, like, pretty GOOD black-resistant armor. The "Of Love and Hate" armor is a good WAW armor for it, alternatively, any black-resistant ALEPH armor works, too. Seeing/working on Censored automatically applies the Terrified status (which normally only appears if an Level 1 Employee witnesses like, an WAW or ALEPH abnormality), instantly draining the majority of their SP, and since they're in a containment unit, you can't restore it via bullets or such. Even if that employee is level 5, it still applies it - i guess it's kinda Censored's special trick, to freak people out no matter what.
With some luck, the black resistance is enough to preserve the remaining SP while they work on Censored (whom deals black damage, hence the black-resistant armor).

Well, at this rate, if you don't have the equipment to handle Censored, yeah, you may wanna restart. Same goes if you where to meet other abnormalities who are nigh-unmanagable with your current resources.
Though, did you do the missions? You might notice Core Supressions are mentioned to become available if enough missions are completed and other requirements, so if you can do those, then it helps a lot to do before restarting the run, as you keep the benefits!

Though if you've been building up LOB points you could also just hire and beef up employees big-time (may wanna skip boosting Justice this way, as it's just too expensive, better off training them via lots of repression work), and keep going that way for a bit longer.

If you do decide to restart, you keep everything (including gear, unlocks, information, etc) but your employees and LOB points, those are reset to the status they where at which day you reset to (if you restart back to day 1, LOB/employees are wiped, if you use memory repository, you're dumped at the nearest checkpoint with how your LOB points/employees where at the time).
Sometimes loading a checkpoint is a great way to avoid a bad abnormality pick, provided the checkpoint brings you back far enough to undo the selection of said abnormality. Beats having to restart entirely if you want to keep going.
(It makes a checkpoint every 5 days, so day 1, 6, 11, 16, 21, etc.)

Oh, and yeah, you're not so much meant to beat the game in the first run, although it's possible if you know how and plan ahead. It's highly recommended to restart the run atleast 1-2 times to get better gear, do more core supressions, get more abnormality info unlocked, etc.
It gets easier/faster anyway, with the more you unlock, so it's no big deal, at worst a tad grindy compared to some other games.

Hey there, thanks for the advice! I never really thought about more people, I never really found a use for them, sadly. But I think i'll be able to progress farther with more people in my group! As well as that, thank you for taking the time to type all of this out, I appreciate it a bunch! Thank you!

[Grim Purrr~urut]

Ah ye, I forgot that Grave of Cherry Blossoms heals SP and HP for everyone in the facility if you do pretty annoying stuff with it.

And Yang instrumental/tool is restoring SP.

[Grim Purrr~urut]

By annoying stuff I mean putting counter to 0 and sacrificing an Agent :D

[Flavour similar to vanilla]

Originally posted by Stamp:

I'm currently close to Day 30, but have found it difficult to progress without a Meltdown happening on Aleph Abnormalities (which are VERY luck based for my characters to not go insane on). I have one character in each department, where I currently have 7. Most of them have 4 100 stats, though a few aren't quite there yet. I heard that you aren't meant to beat the game on your first run, and should restart the game to Day 1 with your observation level so that you can get farther. But how would that strategy help? Is it a legitimate strategy? How should I handle the game now that a Meltdown can happen on an Aleph and ruin my run because my employees went insane (I have CENSORED, and he breaches if my character goes insane, so even if I were to save my employee, I would have an impossible to suppress Abnormality in the facility).

Thank You for reading!

heres some things that may or may not work
1. Have atleast 1 level 5 guy with the best of the best gear, if a meltdown happens send him to deal with it. If more than 2 meltdown then figure out which is more important (Melting love goes before mountain of bodies, Nothing there goes before anything else, etc.)
2. If you have Flesh idol make a boi go use that for 10 secs, then send a different guy to go work on the ALEPH
3. If its a "Weak" Aleph Mountain of bodies, Melting love, Army in pink let them escape and just suppress it with minor caution Use termination bullets on Clerks for mountain of bodies, kill hearts that are in departments with dangerous bois, dont send red bois to fight Melting love
4. Assuming you dont need the points, force everyone to huddle in the corner farthest from the monster and let it escape, then slowly do work on monsters to finish the day

Also some bois like Nothing There and Orchestra of the Dead (White boi with music) you might aswell just surrender