Generating Heart Influence & Dealing with Curses

[Uno]

So the best you can get with sending any level of minions to manage a curse is 90%, that number seems off however, recently (last 3 days since an update) I've been hitting a lot of curses even with having the requisite levels of lore/ability to mange the curse. Clearly a lot more than one in ten...

That being the case you have to quickly generate between 10 to 15 heart influence depending on the curse.

So I get that you can generate Lvl 2 heart influence with Morland's Bookstore as a headquarters. However you cant do this during times that you are exploring locations.
You can get heart influence from painting with pearl dust however this is limited to how much pearl dust that you randomly run across.
You can randomly get heart influence from different doors through dreaming. Level of which varies depending on the door.

To combine influence you need multiple lower level influences and a level of lore high enough to make the combination work (supposition). To get to a level 10 you have to have at least 2 level 2 and bounce back/forth increasing them using other cards that include heart such as vitality or the increase of combining two vitality. To get to 15 you need 3 level 2 and the same process. They all have a timer burn down of 60 seconds and you can only hold one with help via the talk verb.

All of this put together means you really dont have time to generate the level of heart influence necessary to hold off curses once you fail the check.

Even if you have figured out what to do. Without the blind luck getting through the two highest level doors one of which requires sacrifice and the other requiring use of an artifact that needs to be repaired between uses, and picking the right card of 3 options. This put together implies that you MUST know in advance and generate the level of heart influence before going on the exploration of a location with a curse.

Without the ability to generate the level of heart influence on the fly you're punishing players for not tracking all the locations that have curses and grinding up the level of heart influence before you even go on that exploration.

Suggestion make the curse something that could be held in check via the talk verb in order to give the chance of working up to the level of heart influence necessary to protect yourself. Or some other way adjusting the timer for more than 120 seconds before loosing the attribute.

If anyone else has suggestion(s) or something that I've missed by all means please share.
Thanks,
Uno

[TAYAYA]

I too think curses should be rebalanced, and here is my logic.

There are obstacles that have a chance 10% to wound a follower. A follower is able to get three wounds of one type before dying. But this is the difference between follower dying and an attribute lost: you can have 2 or more cultists of each aspect, an obstacle can be solved with any of 2 or more aspects, a wound can be any of 3 types, you can send other followers besides your cultists to an expedition. So basically the real chance to lose your attribute is much bigger than the chance of your follower dying, and this can really hit an unlucky player (like me). I don't take into consideration gameplay tricks like saving an influence in Talk verb, just the basics.

I didn't really think my suggestion over, so all I can come up with is to decrease a chance to catch a curse at max level of appropriate aspect from 10% to 5% or smaller, to equal the chances.

[Maina]

Curses are fine as they are. Not everything needs a 100% perfect counter, though Curses do have a 100% perfect counter.

Even if you don't want to do the prep-ahead-of-time method, the Spider door has a level 10 Heart influence and a deck of only 4 cards. There is a strong chance you can get it before the Curse activates at the cost of some notoriety.

Even if you fail, the cost is minimal. If you aren't spamming repeatable expeditions with curses (and why would you?), then you shouldn't see more than about four successful curses in a run, assuming you do every single expedition once. And there's absolutely no reason to do so many.

[Uno]

4th curse fail in a row... With level 10 in the appropriate area to protect myself. Either its profoundly bad luck or something's changed increasing failure rate. Who should I direct this to for them to check?

[Sintonir]

Originally posted by Uno:

They all have a timer burn down of 60 seconds and you can only hold one with help via the talk verb.

Actually, there is 3 verbs able to hold Influence:
- Talk verb with Sulochana.
- Work verb with painting and Rites which do not burn Influence (i recommend painting).
- And Study without starting it.
Using all 3 you can get Heart 2 Influences from HQ to Heart 15. It isn't fast, but possible.
It is also quite easy to get Heart 6 and Winter 6 from The White Door, with little to no risk, and they combine to Heart 10.
Also, you can get Contentment from Dreaming with Funds and painting, which is the same as Heart 2 (and also Lantern 2) Influence for the purposes of upgrading (but it must go into first slot of Study verb to upgrade it, and can't upgrade itself).
So you can easily get Heart 10 Influence within 2 and a half minutes, and Heart 15 within 5 minutes.

[what am i doing]

You can also get an easy Winter 10 from the Stag Door, to the Ascent of Knives, to combine with Heart 10 for Heart 15.

[Sintonir]

So, if you have Rose-Pearl Dust, you can get Heart 10 Influence in 1:20 gametime (assuming you pause game exactly at the right moment). With 2 of them you get Heart 15 Influence in 2:50 gametime.
If you do not have Rose-Pearl Dust, the fastest way to get Heart 10 Influence would be dreaming with Funds twice and getting Heart 2 from HQ twice, which would use 2:30. But, if you need Heart 15 Influence, first sleep should starts at 0:00, and second in 1:30, and between them you Dream about The Stag Door and go to the Ascent of Knives. Then, 2 more Dreams about The Stag door after you got Heart 10 Influence will get you Winter 10 Influence with very high chance (you need 4 dreams to get it definitely, but you have around 20% chance to not get it with only 3 dreams). This gets Heart Influence in 4:40.

[cpacifying]

Before engaging in any expeditions whatsoever you can obtain Heart 6 lore (the Waking Chant), which enables two very important things: upgrading Heart influences and summoning Percussigants.

Having this lore and Sunset Rite (another card available before expeditions) you can summon your first Percussigant using Knock influence (from dreams, or, more reliable, from exploring streets in moonlight) and Edge believer. After that, you can summon as many Percussigants as you want using already summoned Percussigant and any Knock lore, because Pergussigants aspects (Heart and Edge) exactly match the aspects needed to summon it.

Two Percussigants are great starting team for expeditions. They have >10 Edge, which makes short work of any Watchers, Monks or Guardians and >10 Heart, which minimizes chances for a curse. Finally, they are a reliable meat shield for any accidents, and you can safely add Knock/Forge followers later to deal with other obstacles and be almost sure harm won't touch them.

And now, to dealing with curses that DO trigger, finally.
Using trick explained above, you summon two extra Percussigants that expire more or less at the same time. After a little while, you generate two Vitality cards (working with or studying your Health card). Then, every expired Percussigant leaves Heart-2 influence behind, each of which can be upgraded to Heart-6 influence with Vitality (just don't merge Heart-2 influences together, since two Vitalities cannot be used to craft higher order influence). And, consequently, two Heart-6 influences can be merged to Heart-10, which is enough to stop almost any triggered curse. There is one curse that demands Heart-15, but it is rare, and method described above can be used to craft Heart-15 as well.

So, what I generally do before going to expeditions is: summon three extra Percussigants, use two of them to craft Heart-10, and put the last one in Talk process, to hold the influence decay timer (summons are as good for this as Sulochana). This way I am safe from any curses and can recraft Heart-10 if needed without interrupting expeditions (since I have an easely accessible Pergussigant in Talk process). Downsides: somewhat grindy; Talk process is blocked while doing expeditions (so dispelling expedition Notoriety with Heart follower is not a viable option).