Unwinnable situations?

[vindicar]

There have been situations when I got three Dread or three Fascination dropped into my lap in quick succession. Of course, relevant Activity popped up quickly to suck them up, leaving me with no time to get rid of any of those. A particularly bad example was when Resting with Health produced even more Fascination instead of a Fleeting Memory I hoped for.

The big question is: is that by design?

Sure, I can invoke eldritch powers (a.k.a. edit the save file), but there gotta be an intended way to keep this ♥♥♥♥ from happening.

[Space Wizard]

You can dream with Dread or Fascination + their counter to get rid of them while the activity works. There are a handful of ways to guarantee Dread, and a few really good chances to get contentment.

dream with money, or go to the club for contentment. you can also rng into contentment with the romance season
fail a ritual, work with decrepitude, discuss winter lore with your hunter for guaranteed dread
you can also paint or recruit to 'consume' dread or fascination in the trappings/inspiration slot

also, dreaming with health got nerfed. its chances to produce bad stuff is almost as high as the usual 'good' stuff

[Allexan]

It's by design - you're supposed to be screwed a lot, it's one of the selling points of the game. Yes, Alexis Kennedy really loves to make masochistic gameplay.

[Quizer]

I don't think Dread or Fascination actually get consumed if you use them as inspiration for painting? Pretty sure those cards just come back out when you're done. Maybe Restlessness actually stays gone, but I think most other emotions / influences just come back out.

And yeah, don't rely on default dreaming to counter fascination / dread. There's always the chance to get another of exactly the thing you don't want.

For Dread:

- Get rid of it before it's sucked in by using it in a rite or in follower recruitment / advancement.
- Get rid of Restlessness before it becomes dread in the same way. Dancer can also use Restlessness in place of Health / Passion at the Gaiety, which gets rid of it, too.
- Dream with money to get contentment. I don't think I've ever seen this fail, but I avoid doing it more than once in a row.
- Dream with the White Door and pick the lower left option. This will sometimes have Contentment and never Fascination.
- Visit the Ecdysis club. It often gives contentment, can sometimes give you Fascination, but I don't believe it can give you Dread.
- Use your cursor to hold onto a Dread and prevent it from getting sucked in. You can pause, put it down, do something, pick it back up, unpause. Do this to bridge time until you have a better way to get rid of it or until it decays. Obviously you can only do this to one card at a time.

For Fascination:

- Get rid of it before it's sucked in by using it in a rite or in follower recruitment / advancement.
- Dream with Dread to get rid of it early. Dread is more common than Fascination, so this usually is not too difficult.
- For Cthulu's sake, STOP PAINTING. There is nothing in the game that unavoidably gives you Fascination. Just stop doing all the things that can produce it and you're fine.
- Dream with the White Door. The middle card (the visible one) is sometimes Restlessness. Avoid the right card, which is sometimes Fascination.
- Again, use your cursor to hold it before it can get sucked in if you need to.

For both:

- Keep an eye on the time verb. Click it frequently and check what season is coming up next. Having a bunch of Dread on the board is no big deal if the verb that sucks it in isn't going to appear.
- Try to counter Fascination / Dread early. If you have the verb with the counter at 1, you can produce the appropriate card to counter it and then it will go away, even if you have more Fascination / Dread on the table. If necessary, hold the second bad card with your cursor until the countering card has been sucked in.
- If you need to hold cards with your cursor, avoid going to the Mansus. Going to the Mansus makes you drop the card you are holding, and sometimes it can get sucked in before you even get to see your dreaming reward. Also, making you're you're paused as you come out of it is tricky as well.

[Lantantan]

Just because you dont know at the start how to get rid of them, doesn't mean you can't. There's plenty of additional ways to burn cards you dont like. Sacrifice them in a ritual, use them while promoting a follower, heck you can now even dance your dread away!

[Lantantan]

Oh Quizer just gave a good list, but I have one more in addition to what I already said:

Fascination
To counter fascination, you can always talk to your friendly neigbour hunter about winter lore. This will scare the crap out of you and generate that terror you need.

Terror
To prevent terror, use passion on work (dont use the skill) then input restlessness before it becomes dead. Painting without the skill and only one passion often gives contentment too.

Nice thing about romance is that the memory sticks to you for much longer. Dreaming about that love memory will give you dread/contentment (depending on the type of memory) just when you need it.

[vindicar]

Originally posted by Space ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥:

You can dream with Dread or Fascination + their counter to get rid of them while the activity works.

True, but you need that counter on hand. The big problem here is that many Activities can not be interrupted, even if they should. Like Research, or Work. So if you get Dread at an unfortunate moment, you can't drop everything and rush to get a counter.

Originally posted by Space ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥:

dream with money, or go to the club for contentment. you can also rng into contentment with the romance season

I had to rely on opium quite a lot... but getting a bunch of Fascination completely blindsided me.
Another problem is that there is no clear priority to card being "magneted in" - even if I have Contentment, the Despair sucks in Dread first. Which is, frankly, stupid.

Originally posted by Space ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥:

also, dreaming with health got nerfed. its chances to produce bad stuff is almost as high as the usual 'good' stuff

Dammit. I've been getting loads and loads of Restlessness, which've been interfered with my work (can't always get rid of it promptly enough, before it expires into Dread). Thankfully, after I turned my Hunter into a Rival, he has been getting the hook instead of me. =D

Originally posted by Allexan:

It's by design - you're supposed to be screwed a lot, it's one of the selling points of the game. Yes, Alexis Kennedy really loves to make masochistic gameplay.

Oh well. If the game cheats ("rocks fall, everyone dies"), then it's fair to cheat back.

Thanks, everyone.

[Quizer]

Post updated!

I haven't accidentlly lost a game to Dread / Fascination since I got the hang of the game. You just need to be proactive and keep an eye on that seasonal verb to see what's coming up.

Also, abuse the hell out of the ability to prevent a card from being sucked in by holding it, and don't feel bad about doing so. It seems a little cheaty at first, but I think it's actually fair. It represents your cult leader dropping everything else and throwing all their effort into maintaining their emotional equilibrium or hiding their evil deeds from the authorities. It also balanced by the fact that you can only hold one card at a time. If you have two Dread on the table, one of them is getting sucked in, and there's nothing you can do about it.

[vindicar]

Originally posted by Quizer:

Post updated!

I haven't accidentlly lost a game to Dread / Fascination since I got the hang of the game. You just need to be proactive and keep an eye on that seasonal verb to see what's coming up.

Also, abuse the hell out of the ability to prevent a card from being sucked in by holding it, and don't feel bad about doing so. It seems a little cheaty at first, but I think it's actually fair. It represents your cult leader dropping everything else and throwing all their effort into maintaining their emotional equilibrium or hiding their evil deeds from the authorities. It also balanced by the fact that you can only hold one card at a time. If you have two Dread on the table, one of them is getting sucked in, and there's nothing you can do about it.

...that's actually genius. I used Talking to followers to put a decaying card on hold before, but literally holding it? Never even occured to me. =D

[Lantantan]

Holding cards works with notoriety too. Though its thematically not as funny as painting with 4 notoriety to hide them from the cops. I always imagine 4 corpse "mannequins" in our painters workshop.

I like the way you headcannoned the card holding Quizer! Fearsome cult leader lies curled up whispering to himself: "Dont be afraid" "Nothing to be scared off" "Think happy thoughts"...

[bullno1]

Originally posted by Lantantan:

I like the way you headcannoned the card holding Quizer! Fearsome cult leader lies curled up whispering to himself: "Dont be afraid" "Nothing to be scared off" "Think happy thoughts"...

Tbf, compared to the horrors you witnessed, a cult leader is not that fearsome.

[Yamantaka]

Personally, I watch the Despair Wolf and Fascination counters obssessively, and try and guide them back to zero quickly. It used to be I was alarmed at 2 dread/fascination, but now I react strongly to even one. There are times I refuse to travel the Mansus, because I feel like I need to keep my sleep potentially available for contentment. Also despite the warnings that opium will hurt me, I have yet to see a negative consequence, though I'm sure there is if I over do it.

I feel I never die from Dread or Fascination and I never do the 'holding the card' to keep the counter frozen trick. Nor do I ever play with the save file - I play 'Ironman', true rogue. But this is only the result of losing a pile (maybe a dozen) of carefully built up games to dread and fascination in my mid-game i.e. still learning the game

[vindicar]

Fascination is never a problem now, since I somehow have more Fleeting Memories than I know what to do with.
Dread is another business. Still hitting Opium every now and then.

[Quizer]

Originally posted by vindicar:

Fascination is never a problem now, since I somehow have more Fleeting Memories than I know what to do with.
Dread is another business. Still hitting Opium every now and then.

Yeah, Fleeting Memories (or Fleeting Reminiscence, as it's now called) seemed very common in my brief attempt to play the new beta version, though it was pretty useless seeing as how Fascination just kept coming back as Consciousness of Radiance, which decayed back into Fascination. But it looks like that got fixed this afternoon, so I'll give it another try after I sleep.

[Teag]

In my experience, the biggest source of Dread comes from the regular event that sucks in your Temptation/Ambition and spits out the Restlessness that eventually decays into your problem.

I try to pre-empt that by working Passion to consume the Restlessness card before it decays. Returns Glimmering, sometimes some money, sometimes even Contentment.

[Quizer]

That's one of the drawbacks of the moth ascension, yeah. You get to deal with restlessness from your ambition throughout the whole game. I tend to forget that working passion without the skill is an option, but early game using it to recruit / promote and late game burning it in summons works just as well.