What am I supposed to do?

[Lambi]

I've have not even played two hours and I'm already completetly lost. The in-game tutorial feels terrible. I've already had to look things up multiple times on the wiki just to understand what things are. But now I just closed the game altogether and don't really feel like coming back to it because I have quite literally zero idea on what to do next. Anything I want to do always feels locked in some way or another.

In Stardew Valley, the farm and the dungeon were almost instantly available and you could always keep working on them if you didn't know what to do. But here, I really can't see anything I could do besides aimlessly walking around.

[Borfoid]

The game isn't really structured in a linear way.

You're absolutely right in that it's very easy to get lost very quickly, it's also very easy to play for an entire day in real-time and not really make much progress towards anything unless you figure out what you want to do next and you actively work towards it.

The main goals in the game can often be obfuscated too, the "Known NPC" list gives you quests but quite often there's critical information missing on there that - if you got sidetracked on something else - you can forget and not really remember what you're supposed to do even if it told you explicitly what to do at the time.

It's a great game though. I recently restarted it from scratch and if it's any consolation I almost completed the game a year or so ago and when I came back to it recently I didn't have that much of an advantage coming back to it ... Had to delete my previous game because I couldn't remember what it was all about, then I still got lost playing it from scratch and still had to Google stuff.

If you do stick with it then whatever you do, don't bother trying to figure out alchemy on your own. Google that bit, if you set out to try and figure it out for yourself whatever love you managed to rekindle with the game will be dead and buried if you try and figure out that system without a cheat sheet.

1. Improve Graveyard
2. Improve Church
3. Make money

Those are some basic goals

[Lambi]

Originally posted by Borfoid:

The game isn't really structured in a linear way.

You're absolutely right in that it's very easy to get lost very quickly, it's also very easy to play for an entire day in real-time and not really make much progress towards anything unless you figure out what you want to do next and you actively work towards it.

The main goals in the game can often be obfuscated too, the "Known NPC" list gives you quests but quite often there's critical information missing on there that - if you got sidetracked on something else - you can forget and not really remember what you're supposed to do even if it told you explicitly what to do at the time.

It's a great game though. I recently restarted it from scratch and if it's any consolation I almost completed the game a year or so ago and when I came back to it recently I didn't have that much of an advantage coming back to it ... Had to delete my previous game because I couldn't remember what it was all about, then I still got lost playing it from scratch and still had to Google stuff.

If you do stick with it then whatever you do, don't bother trying to figure out alchemy on your own. Google that bit, if you set out to try and figure it out for yourself whatever love you managed to rekindle with the game will be dead and buried if you try and figure out that system without a cheat sheet.

1. Improve Graveyard
2. Improve Church
3. Make money

Those are some basic goals

Yeah, problem is that every single step of the way there's a hurdle.

To improve the graveyard for instance I need some stone repair kit. Which requires Clay. How do you get Clay? The game doesn't tell you that.

The bartender guy says to find Snake in order to get a license. Found the guy, but he requires Faith to talk to me. How do I get Faith? The game doesn't tell you that.

To start a farm you need permission. How do you get it? The game doesn't tell you that. I did however find it by accident when talking to the bartender. So I got the land to the farm and lo and behold I need seeds to start planting stuff. How do I get seeds? The game doesn't tell you that.

I could go on and on. It feels like I have the Wiki open more than the actual game because every single thing needs to be looked up.

[Air Bear]

Dont bother with the repair kits. They require more advanced parts then you can make at the beginning. Just repair what you can with the free ones given at the start and then start swapping the broken headstones and fences out with new ones.

You'll get clay early on in the Bishop quest lines. I think its right after opening the church. He'll ask for something and give you the technology to dig up clay. Note that the only clay deposit you need (And, I think, can even use) is right in front of the church.

Faith is from the weekly sermons you give in the church. Never skip them, even if you arent actively using faith, you'll need them eventually.

Seeds? Check south of the wheat fields east of the graveyard. Go during the day and bring some cash. You plant seeds in lots of 4, but plants dont return 4 seeds to you, so you're better off buying more seeds than you need, if you plan to keep growing the same thing repeatedly.

Its an exploration game. Most of the game's design philosophy is 'go wander around and find out' and 'experiment and find out' or 'its locked behind a tech tree or crafting table'.

It definitely needs more explanation for stuff and better documentation of quest things. In my current playthrough, I'm stalled out with the refugees with no hint for what they want next. I probably need to advance all the other quest lines, but I want my bags, dang it.

[󠀡󠀡]

Originally posted by Lambi:

Originally posted by Borfoid:

The game isn't really structured in a linear way.

You're absolutely right in that it's very easy to get lost very quickly, it's also very easy to play for an entire day in real-time and not really make much progress towards anything unless you figure out what you want to do next and you actively work towards it.

The main goals in the game can often be obfuscated too, the "Known NPC" list gives you quests but quite often there's critical information missing on there that - if you got sidetracked on something else - you can forget and not really remember what you're supposed to do even if it told you explicitly what to do at the time.

It's a great game though. I recently restarted it from scratch and if it's any consolation I almost completed the game a year or so ago and when I came back to it recently I didn't have that much of an advantage coming back to it ... Had to delete my previous game because I couldn't remember what it was all about, then I still got lost playing it from scratch and still had to Google stuff.

If you do stick with it then whatever you do, don't bother trying to figure out alchemy on your own. Google that bit, if you set out to try and figure it out for yourself whatever love you managed to rekindle with the game will be dead and buried if you try and figure out that system without a cheat sheet.

1. Improve Graveyard
2. Improve Church
3. Make money

Those are some basic goals

Yeah, problem is that every single step of the way there's a hurdle.

To improve the graveyard for instance I need some stone repair kit. Which requires Clay. How do you get Clay? The game doesn't tell you that.

The bartender guy says to find Snake in order to get a license. Found the guy, but he requires Faith to talk to me. How do I get Faith? The game doesn't tell you that.

To start a farm you need permission. How do you get it? The game doesn't tell you that. I did however find it by accident when talking to the bartender. So I got the land to the farm and lo and behold I need seeds to start planting stuff. How do I get seeds? The game doesn't tell you that.

I could go on and on. It feels like I have the Wiki open more than the actual game because every single thing needs to be looked up.

First, relax. You can take the game as slow or as fast as you want. You can waste time in game and nothing bad will happen as a result. It's a chill game.

The game introduces you to Gerry, the bishop, the inquisitor, to snake, to the tavern and the bartender, and to the blacksmith very early on. At the same time it expects you to go out and explore--mainly go to the village and talk to the NPCs there. Pick up quests from them. See what they have for sale. While you're doing that you're mining rocks, collecting sticks and upgrading your tech.

The game will give you carrot seeds very early on--just keep playing.

Some tech (like the one for getting clay) is locked behind story progression. Focus on what you can do rather than try to do what you can't. While you can't repair all the graves, you can make your own gravestones and fences. If I recall correctly, if you use your repair kits wisely you'll only need to make like one gravestone to get to 5 graveyard score for the Bishop.

The only "tricky" part in this game is that some NPCs only show one day a week on specific days. Keep in mind which ones you need to talk to and make sure you visit them or you'll need to wait a week to see them again.

[Cryten]

Some tips.

- Seeds from the farmer south west of the inn in the wheat field. Look at the sign and speak to the inn keeper to open up the farm. Using veges from the farm for basic food is a great way to extend your play time. The donkey will also give you some carrot seeds as part of his quest line triggered after the church opens.

- You can drag items in your inventory to one of 4 hotkeys. This is best used for food or other consumables to let you rapidly restock energy. Before cooking berries make a good energy source.

- Get the teleport stone from the inn keeper ASAP. It really helps getting around.

- Opening the church should be your first objective. You can buy additional repair kits if you find a way to make money, but as previously stated the easier way it to just make new decorations.

- Blue tech will be your sticking point for a while. Once the church is open pay attention to the alchemy lab underneath. skin or bat wings transformed to pig skin with the church workbench (easy no blue unlock). Then pig skin to paper. Paper into study bench for science points. Finally Faith + Science points + Grave Decoration or corpse body part for blue tech points.

[vagabond]

About the Bishop and clay: after you unlock the church and give your first sermon, he'll say the air is too dry and he's leaving. Then he completely disappears until next week. Just talk to him the following Sun day and ask him "what should I do" and he'll unlock clay and sand.

[Lambi]

Originally posted by vagabond:

About the Bishop and clay: after you unlock the church and give your first sermon, he'll say the air is too dry and he's leaving. Then he completely disappears until next week. Just talk to him the following Sun day and ask him "what should I do" and he'll unlock clay and sand.

Yeah I've gotten past that now and gotten further into the game so there's at least some sense of direction. I was so extremely close to dropping it and refunding the game. But luckily one of my friend had played it before and could just talk me through it. But even now, 12+ hours in, the game is frustratingly bad at explaining things. And it's not in the sense of exploration and finding out for yourself. It's just plain bad in that aspect.

My friend even told me like "Hey when you get to Alchemy, just Google it". I have the Wiki pretty much permanently open.

[Borfoid]

Originally posted by Lambi:

My friend even told me like "Hey when you get to Alchemy, just Google it". I have the Wiki pretty much permanently open.

I told you that too in my response to your OP.

You weren't wrong - at all - as far as instructions go you've got two options with this game.

#1 - You figure it out

#2 - You go and look for someone else who figured it out

The game isn't going to step up and give you #3 and tell you.

Depending on how much you feel like a challenge then go for #1 but certain aspects of this game just give up and go for #2 unless you've got a lot of time on your hands.

With alchemy, you'd need time on your hands and a spreadsheet and the willingness to reinvent the wheel but the wheel isn't a wheel, it's a massive spreadsheet of combinations with countless variations that you're going to need to farm mats for and try - all while knowing there's one that already exists online that is a URL away.

Even for a lot of the small stuff it's not worth trying to figure it out.

If you need to do X for an NPC and the instructions aren't clear and you are missing something, just don't bother. There's sooooooooo much content in this game it's not worth wasting the time.

Pretty sure if you were to play this now with all the expansions from start to finish and 100% it, figuring everything out for yourself with no help at all, it'd take you a few years.

Would be interesting for someone to actually try it and see how long it took... I doubt anyone would ever be able or willing to though - the temptation to cheat would be uncontrollable.

And to be fair it's not cheating to look it up - it's just not being brutally punished with a week of wandering about thinking "am I insane, or am I missing something?"

As I said before though - amazing game - got arguably more content than a lot of people's actual 9-5

[󠀡󠀡]

Originally posted by Borfoid:

Originally posted by Lambi:

My friend even told me like "Hey when you get to Alchemy, just Google it". I have the Wiki pretty much permanently open.

I told you that too in my response to your OP.

You weren't wrong - at all - as far as instructions go you've got two options with this game.

#1 - You figure it out

#2 - You go and look for someone else who figured it out

The game isn't going to step up and give you #3 and tell you.

Depending on how much you feel like a challenge then go for #1 but certain aspects of this game just give up and go for #2 unless you've got a lot of time on your hands.

With alchemy, you'd need time on your hands and a spreadsheet and the willingness to reinvent the wheel but the wheel isn't a wheel, it's a massive spreadsheet of combinations with countless variations that you're going to need to farm mats for and try - all while knowing there's one that already exists online that is a URL away.

Even for a lot of the small stuff it's not worth trying to figure it out.

If you need to do X for an NPC and the instructions aren't clear and you are missing something, just don't bother. There's sooooooooo much content in this game it's not worth wasting the time.

Pretty sure if you were to play this now with all the expansions from start to finish and 100% it, figuring everything out for yourself with no help at all, it'd take you a few years.

Would be interesting for someone to actually try it and see how long it took... I doubt anyone would ever be able or willing to though - the temptation to cheat would be uncontrollable.

And to be fair it's not cheating to look it up - it's just not being brutally punished with a week of wandering about thinking "am I insane, or am I missing something?"

As I said before though - amazing game - got arguably more content than a lot of people's actual 9-5

You're way overstating the difficulty of the alchemy system. Every day you can buy a random recipe from Clotho. I don't look at the wiki nor do I keep anything in a spreadsheet. Every day or every few days I make a run to Clotho to buy a recipe, and after a few weeks I have all the recipes, not that you even need all the recipes to finish the game.

[Air Bear]

The dropped goo when you try a combination is actually a hint to a working recipe.

[Cryten]

I did both the clotho and experimenting path and frankly I recommend just looking it up. Its not an engaging or interesting system, its just tedious. The work needed for ingredients is enough work already for the alchemy system.

[Borfoid]

I just didn't bother because there wasn't an in game mechanic to keep track of what I tried and failed.

If there was, that'd be fine.

I did start a spreadsheet and I did figure out a lot of it, but it's not an easy system to get your head around and it's not guided in the slightest.

X + Y = Fail

That usually means that in the future that combination would be locked out.

This game, it isn't. That's not me overstating the complexity, it's unnecessarily complex.

[Borfoid]

Originally posted by quaixor:

You're way overstating the difficulty of the alchemy system.

Let's say I'm going to take this on face value.

If I combine one thing with another thing and I have a result of that combination, which can also be combined.

That's an alchemy system.

Would a good alchemy system tell you in game that you tried that combination before and it produced a certain outcome ? Or would you need to make your own spreadsheet to track it ?

This game tracks successful combinations, which is cool, but it doesn't track others.

You can't tell me that this alchemy system isn't complicated when you can sit there and combine stuff over and over and over and unless you remember what you did in all those combinations you've no idea if you've making progress.

Is there a way to get to the end of it all - sure - probably. But I've no idea what you're even talking about with all the recipes. That alone really isn't indicative of a good system considering I've almost finished the game and I've no idea what you're on about.

I don't know if that guy did or didn't exist last time I played, I haven't seen him/her this time around and I've just been figuring out alchemy on my own.

If what you're saying is true - great - I'd love to have someone in game to tell me what I'm supposed to do but maybe it just wasn't there.

I don't know who Clotho is, and I'm kinda done with Alchemy... I don't need much else and they didn't show up and I've got all the expansions.

Edit : That's the witch ... So just go back to the witch and she solves all the puzzles for alchemy. Be nice if it told you that.

I'm just gonna say what I said before.

Can we get someone who's never played this game to play it - with zero help - and see how long it takes them to actually 100% the game. I'm pretty sure it'll take years... Literally years to figure it out solo.

[Air Bear]

Agreed that the alchemy system is tedious.
Clotho is the witch in the swamp west of the graveyard that sells you a) alchemy ingredients b) premade batches of the stuff you can use for embalming (so you never have to craft them yourself... you can, but you never have to), c) seedlings for bushes and apple trees, d) various potions, and e) randomized alchemy recipes

You can also get alchemy recipes from the tavern DLC's questline.

[Borfoid]

This is, without doubt, the most complicated exploration game I've ever played.

Not a bad thing - but it is

I'm banging away at my graveyard, my church, my farm, my hives, my zombies, my dungeon, my alchemy - and everything else between and beyond...

The one thing I should have known is that going back to that witch in the swamp daily would have given me all the stuff I needed for alchemy.

With everything else on my mind - why didn't I think of that ?! It's so simple.

It's a blatant clue isn't it - blatant ?!