Cheat: How to freeze time (sort of).

[nephilimnexus]

Edited: This method causes problems, but I'm leaving it here for posterity & to admit that I can mistakes. The fixed version of this is a few posts down.

Important: Make sure that you've already unlocked all your verbs and basic story before you do this, otherwise you'll break your game. By this I mean get to the point where you've started the 9-to-5 grind for your job, exploration, study and dreaming are all unlocked, along with your first point of health, reason and passion. If you freeze the clock before they've unlocked then they never will.

Got that? Good. So pause, save and exit to main menu. Now open your computer and look for this:

YourSteamDirectory/steamapps/common/Cultist Simulator/StreamingAssets/Core/recipies/time.json <- Open this with NotePad++

Now find line 23, which will read:

warmup: 60,

Change this to whatever you want, say a million or so.

Example: warmup: 1000000,

Save it, close NotePad++, head back to the game and reload. The clock will still be running as normal, for now, as it's still in the last cycle. When the new cycle starts, though, well... it will be one million seconds (about twelve days of real time, in case you were wondering) before that annoying verb grabs more of your hard-earned cash.

Now you can take your time & only work when you want to... or you run out of cash. But now all your cash is yours to spend how you want to. Y'know, buying usefull stuff and funding expeditions. Heck, you could even squeak by just doing menial labor now (which has it's perks, by the way - it never gets you any attention from the Inquisition and you can't be fired).

Just remember to change it back before starting a new game.

[nephilimnexus]

Still not easy enough for you? You can do the same things with pretty much any timer. Hirelings are an escpecially good candidate for this treatment, like so...

Cultist Simulator/StreamingAssets/Core/elements/hirelings.json

See the part under each one where it says "lifetime:120?"

Edit: Just delete the line and they become permanent. Also works on summoned minions (spirits.json)

[Imrahil]

Or, you know, just make infinite amounts of Funds by using the Reason based Job? I usually grind up to 200-300 in about 15 minutes. Fast Forward is your friend.

[nephilimnexus]

Which is fine if you're into grinding. This is for people who aren't.

[Imrahil]

For people who aren't into grinding I suggest just editing the savefile and add 100000 Funds. It's a) easier than this and b) doesn't break other game mechanics...

[nephilimnexus]

An alternate method would be to leave "warmup" alone and just change line 25 instead:

greedy: true,

... and just delete it.

It will still have a slot that funds can go into, but it won't suck them out your stack. So far I've been able to just ignore it forever and it just sits there helpless.

This is probably a better method, now that I think about it, as it lets the clock keep running normally (no game breaking risk) while still freeing the player from the eternal money sink effect,

[Imrahil]

Originally posted by nephilimnexus:

An alternate method would be to leave "warmup" alone and just change line 26 instead:

Why are you so fixated on screwing with the config? The devs explicitly invited us to toy with the save files. The config might be changed by any update reverting your tinkering and screwing with you.
Just give yourself a couple thousand or so funds. Open the save file search for this block:

{
"quantity": "1500",
"markedForConsumption": "False",
"lifetimeRemaining": "0",
"elementId": "funds"
}

So much easier, sanctioned by the devs and guaranteed to not ♥♥♥♥ your game in any way... They explicitly mention editing funds for this very reason...

[nephilimnexus]

I know this may come as a complete shock to you, but not everyone in the world wants to do things exactly the same way that you do. Terrifying, I know.

[Imrahil]

Originally posted by nephilimnexus:

I know this may come as a complete shock to you, but not everyone in the world wants to do things exactly the same way that you do. Terrifying, I know.

You can do whatever you feel comfortable with, but I do not like suggesting ways that have an actual potential to cause trouble when the Developers have basically already told us the best way.

So if disagreement hurts your feelings, tough luck.

[Astraea]

It also means you can't actually win the game, since you need time the healer for that.

[nephilimnexus]

Which is why I ammended my original post to the cleaner, second method of just removing the "greedy" trait from the clock verb. As before, this allows the clock to run like normal without draining your funds.

I've also found that you can just delete the timers off almost anything. This is most useful for glimmering, erudition and vitality, as it allows you to bank those cards indefinitely. It can also be done for summons, which is useful because they are far too much of hassel to aquire to watch vanish in three minutes flat IMHO. Hirelings can be made permanent as well, as mentioned before, which is a good way to stock up on potential prisoners while going from Ascention 3 to 6.

I'm familiar with the "just give yourself a zillion gold" trick - it's been posted plenty of times before, but starting off as a lottery winner wasn't what I was looking for. What I was actually looking for was a way to just ease up on the clock/money grind a bit so that I didn't have worry about ending up a begger before I could take out Mr.Alden. Sadly I couldn't figure that particular method out, so I went a little overkill and just zapped the decay out completely.

Speaking of things you can edit out completely, you can just delete the lines for the clock/time verb for sickness and never worry about getting sick again. Of course if you delete the vitality timers that works almost as well.

Also handy is deleting the timers on the Clerk job, so that you can just ignore it and come back to it when you dang well feel like it. No more time (or passion) wasted begging for it back everytime you get interrupted by, well, anything other than the job itself.

Finally, in case I didn't mention it before, any card without a timer can be stacked, including cards that you modify to be timer-free. To me, simply having a more tidy table alone was worth it right there - no more did I have to sit and watch six different copies of the same card all taking up separate spaces as they rotted away.

The (altered) end goal, for me at least, was to add some nice quality-of-life cheats to make the game playable (and winnable) without feeling like a perpetual grind & beat the clock challenge, and doing so without ever needing to use a console command for anything. Even with this one can still lose, via arrest, despair, insanity, etc... but one's odds of survival get a lot better.

[nephilimnexus]

Addendum: Even after removing the Greedy train, you'll still get spammed with Starvation if you don't delete that from the list of things that time can spawn at you (line 20).

[_m_a_]

If i set warmup 60 to 80 (%34 more time) or 90 (%50) but will it break the game? is it too much?
i also want to lower event spawn rates.
How will this effect seasons?
Do i see less seasons? Or same number with x 90 sec?
Do you suggest something lighter like 75 (%25) or 72 (%20) warmup?
Thanks.

[nephilimnexus]

In the long run, you'll find that you'll need the clock to run down in order to spawn certain events - the game cannot be won without this, so artificially lengthening the clock can make that take longer too. It may even stretch the time beyond the feasibility limit of other timers (i.e. you might have only 10 minutes to complete a task normally, and the stretched clock makes it take 20 minutes).

I do not know how to change the frequency of seasons. I do know that they can be deleted outright, but again this can cause issues. The only one I'd say that can be safely removed without risk of bad effects is the sickness event. AFAIK it only exists to sap your money and/or vitality.

Also, in the time since I originally wrote this I've learned quite a bit more about how to mod the game and frankly my entire original post should probably be disregarded. It turns out that even if one removes the "greedy" trait from the timer it will still toss "starvation" at you when it runs out.

A much better solution, it turns out, is to just go into the data for all the careers in the game and increase your pay. Look for work_2_jobs.json under Data/StreamingAssets/content/core/recipes. Anyplace it says "funds" is what the job pays. You can also delete the timers on jobs so that you only need to actually show up for work when you feel like it (no risk of demotion).

Here's an example. If you go to line 700:

        {
            "id": "institutephysicianwork",
            "label": "Work at the Institute",
            "requirements": {
                "institutephysicianjob": 1,
                "ritual": -1
            },
            "effects": {
                "funds": 20
            },
            "actionid": "work",
            "startdescription": "There is a dank and clinging smell to the Institute halls that never quite leaves one. Perhaps it is the paint. Perhaps it is the patients. Perhaps it is something in the walls.",
            "description": "I have done some good. My patients are quieter than when I began.",
            "warmup": 60,
            "craftable": true
        },

There, being a physician now pays $20 per shift and since I erased the lifetime timer I can show up when I want or skip work for a month and still keep my job.

[_m_a_]

So even 70 may break it, i will change nothing than as i haven't gone far.
I probably just add funds via console if i really have trouble. Im just bad at rts games :)

[nephilimnexus]

The easiest - and most productive - cheats almost always are just deleting "lifetime" from something. For example if you delete lifetime from hirelings and spirits they never leave. Delete it from restlessness and it never turns to dread. Delete it from a job and you can't be fired for slacking. Delete it from an aspect and it will never fade in power. Delete it from stat boosters and you can take your time raising your main character to 5+ in everything. Corpses can be kept until you raise them and prisoners can be kept locked away forever. You can even keep that Erratic Pawn from going insane on you.

Most of all, deleting timers keeps your table more organized and less cluttered, as cards without timers can just stack on top of each other.

You might also want to try my "Hail Hydra" mod. It allows the Cult of St.Hydra path to Exalt cultists from any and every branch, raising their skills to perfect 10s across the board.