Difficulty spike in year one Autumn

[David Davidson]

Have I done something wrong? The difficulty seems to have gone from manageable to rather stressful.
I completed quite s few story missions and only upgraded equipment when I needed it.
I now have to build the second bridge (or help in building it) to the desert, which requires quite a few multiple process items and multiple process machines.
I've ran out of tempering fluid so I'll have to ruin dive for more.

Is this normal, or have I advance too fast? I would put the quests on the backburner but they're timed and if I don't do them, they'll autocomplete, I'll not end up with as many workshop points and probably not come in 2nd place this month, which has a sizeable bonus since I only have 22k gols.

Did I do something wrong? Or did I just complete the early missions too quickly, such as the WOW industries one, which wasn't timed, IIRC.

Will there be time to "recover" if I throw myself into my work and ruin dive for enough tempering liquid and other ruin only items to finish at least one bridge quest, or are all story quests going to be timed now?

[Adesanya]

Make sure there are no time limits .... most of these don't have one. Relax and have fun!

[mogiks 😺😻]

You can also commission the Civil Corps to get Tempering Fluid for you at the Ruins in the Collapsed Wasteland, but it's kinda pricy especially if you want it fast, so it probably is better to fight through a couple of levels yourself.

Personally I don't think it's possible to advance too fast. If you need more furnaces etc. make them ASAP and it will pay off quite quickly in ability to produce materials faster. What materials are you having trouble getting in time? If it's carbon steel bars you just need more furnaces.

If you need more Gols, fish at the fishing point by Bassiano Falls for Goliaths.

[David Davidson]

Originally posted by indie.author.extraordinaire:

Make sure there are no time limits .... most of these don't have one. Relax and have fun!

There are time limits, though the game is a bit unclear about them.
Each commission reads "we need this within 7 days"
Then "commission time 15 days"

The commission also involves a bridge to a new area, so what happens if I fail? Will Higgins take them? Will the bridge never be constructed? I've googled and the results don't seem to say much. I have 2 basic furnaces making charcoal, 2 civil furnaces and one industrial furnace making steel, though since I ran out of tempering liquid making hardened clay I'm going to have to ruin dive and hope I get some of it.

Edit, I've also got a comprehensive grinder to make more stuff at a lower material cost and could likely build another industrial furnace easily enough. I have 5 furnaces in total.

[F'lar]

The bridge to the desert is timed - in fact, all four of the commissions (bridge towers, lights and cables) all end on the same day. If you haven't started already, start cranking out carbon steel bars and commission the Civil Corps for the tempering fluid.

[RAD-82]

You haven't gone too fast. I started this bridge mission on the 17th of summer.

[David Davidson]

Yeah I think I did at least half the earlier bridge commissions.
I can't commission tempering fluid directly so I guess I'll have to do a level of the sewage plant and see what I get. If that fails I'll rent a week in abandoned ruins 2.
Hopefully I get lucky enough to manage one of the commissions, though my stockpile was low from doing the earlier bridge commissions and completing standard comissions.

I only need 4 more tempering fluid then I'm set for one of the commissions.

What happens if I can't complete any of these commissions? Does someone else simply take them like the street lights? Do I still get to use the desert bridge?

[mogiks 😺😻]

Originally posted by Schlomo Shekelshoastein:

I can't commission tempering fluid directly so I guess I'll have to do a level of the sewage plant and see what I get. If that fails I'll rent a week in abandoned ruins 2.

...

What happens if I can't complete any of these commissions? Does someone else simply take them like the street lights? Do I still get to use the desert bridge?

You don't commission tempering fluid individually, you commission a member to go to one of the levels of the sewage plant that you've already cleared and they will bring back a variety of loot from that level.

I believe Higgins or someone else will do the commission if you fail to do it. You'll still get to use the bridge. However a lot of people have this bridge quest bugged so that the bridge was never completed and they can't progress the story. There's speculation it's because they didn't do the commission themselves. I'm not sure if that's still the case but I think it was supposedly fixed in one of the post-release hotfixes, just not for people who'd already been affected.

[Valatros]

Yeah you'll be fine, higgins has your back for getting story stuff moved along even if you get sidetracked doing other things. The best way to get tempering fluid is second part of the sewers, the giant pipe wielding guys can drop it, the boss is guaranteed 3 plus a bonus 1 for doing the run. Speccing into double loot chance in the combat tree is worthwhile, too, you'll get copper wires and stuff that you'll want later while you're about it.

The tempering fluid bottleneck is real and normal, don't worry about it. The only times I've managed to do every single story commission before higgins could get to them was when I went through and strategically prepared materials.

If you wanna get built up faster the advice regarding making more furnaces is spot on, more furnaces leads to more materials leads to more furnaces/gold, it's a positive loop. If you can afford to, pick up the dream lamp recipe from the furniture store. Give dream lamps to Mint to get his friendship up to two hearts (~10 dream lamps tops, from 0, likely less since you get some friendship with mint from commissions). At two hearts he'll give you the drill, which is the godtool of mining. Frequently get thousands of multiple types of ore whenever I take that baby and some dried apple into a ruin.

[mogiks 😺😻]

Oh, and don't forget you can slow the game time down in the settings. This will make time pass more slowly so you have more time for gathering materials.

[David Davidson]

Originally posted by mogiks:

Oh, and don't forget you can slow the game time down in the settings. This will make time pass more slowly so you have more time for gathering materials.

This is never knew. Thanks.

I'll probably be going to bed after this in-game day (it's nearly 4am and I have a bunch of stuff to do tomorrow) I got enough liquid to do one commission tomorrow, I'm just stuck when it comes to steel, though slowing time may help me get more materials, though I have about 600 iron ore so maybe an extra furnace would be useful (I went with a comprehensive grinder instead) but extra time in abandoned ruins sounds good, since I rarely use all my stamina.

Edit, surprised none of the beginners guides I checked mentioned slowing down time for ruin diving. Also the game does have a fairly steep difficulty spike. Originally they want you making really basic stuff then it shoots up to carbon steel everything.

Hopefully the bridge does get built as there's no way I can finish all four of the commissions without finding some sort of inventory editing cheat software, which will be a last ditch choice if the commissions vanish and the bridge never gets made, that way I can reload, edit the required items in and avoid being locked out; though as said above it seems to only happen to people who played with a save prior to the current version, so I should be fine. I don't mind missing out on a bit of gold, I'm already nearly as good as Higgins in terms of workshop points, about 2k off and my competitor is 3k behind me. I did lots of the previous bridge commissions which really knocked out my carbon steel supply.

As for the ruins, sewage ruins #2 gave me what I needed and I'll try #3 shortly (I'm LVL 24/5 IIRC (just exited the game, typing on my phone) and unlocked a gun recipe (which the church aren't too happy about, though I always found the church characters boring anyway), so long as it doesn't affect my standing with the Civil Corps or any other city members except Lee and nora I don't mind. Venom rounds should help with boss battles.

[ﾚﾌﾄ]

I was also building the Bridge in year 1 Autumn and it is a spike if your not ready for it, for the bridge, I ended up with about 8 furnaces(4 stone, 3 Civil, 1 Industrial) running to keep up.
Basic furnace for Charcoal and sometimes glass and stone. Everything else for that carbon steel baby!

I also had a Civil Cutter and an Industrial Cutter, but looking back I wish I had at least two Industrial Cutters.
I had one grinder but it might be worth to have 2. A basic Skiver and an Advanced Skiver.

The difficulty is less about advancing too fast and more about advancing without more efficiency, you really need to have multiple machines working in unison if you want those commissiosn. The more machines you have, the faster you can complete commissions. The initial investment is steep martial wise but the money payout is steeper.

Looking back,
If I wanted to breeze though any story/daily commissions this game has to offer so far, I would just build several machines and knock things out in a matter of in-game hours.

[David Davidson]

As an update, I got one of the commissions done but I highly doubt I'll get two finished. One commission has already vanished from the board. Hopefully I don't get hit with the no bridge bug.
Where is the desert bridge at so I can check if it does autocomplete, or if it's bugged. I would assume the bug happens when you take the commission but fail it, so I'm leaving everything on the board until I know I can just grab it and hand it in.
I don't mind losing the commissions, I'm doing okay financially and the commissions are more materially intensive than financially beneficial and I've been taking other commissions so that I stay in 2nd place and get the 7000 gold bonus.

Just hope the bridge is there as there's no way I'm finishing the other 2 commissions that are left, it's the 12th of autumn and I don't have enough carbon steel or tempering fluid.

[RawCode]

just rengage boss in WOW industries as long as needed to defeat it.

game have severe issue with weapons and armors, well, lack of weapons and armors with exception to some spoonfeeded free weapons and armors given to you for free as part of story.