exile - i dont get it

[Gronk]

1. love the original game and the other DLCs
   
2. don't regret getting the exile DLC, and i will get anything else they release
   
3. i've played the original game extensively (for whatever that's worth)
   
4. i care enough about the game to not leave a negative review

I don't get exile.
I get that you have to explore the current location, sell your years for cash, learn of new locations, buy assets, maybe get an obscurity and get the hell out when the traces stack up. Yeah i get that we are now on a big timeout. Can't manage to retire before the 77 years are gone? Lose.

But i don't get it. Nothing happens. There is no game and no excitement doing anything. Just kind of an RNG simulator.
And its boring. Might as well get 5 dice and try to roll 4 sixes.

There was always something going on in the original. Stuff to do, things to manage and watch out for, lore to explore and read. Found a new book? amazing, a bit of lore. Find a new raid? great, get my summons ready. Finding a new summon? cant sleep for days. and don't remind me of exploring the mansus for the first time. At over 150 hours i still get shivers reading the lore bits.
My kids love watching me play and reading out the lore (although they don't understand english). My kids have been reminding me all week to buy the DLC. They even did all their homework on time just so they can watch me play.
So today they leave after watching me press the same button for 10 minutes without anything happening.
I tried a few hours, but nothing is happening. Sometimes i don't get out fast enough and it eats all the assets I've spend decades acquiring. Sometimes i don't find anything useful, just a bunch of houses and cant even get out (although i'm learning to always have a few $ around)

So yeah, so far there is like 2 actions i don't want to use, 3 buttons i cant do anything with and a round timer that ... does nothing.
None of the things i've seen so far seem to be connected in a meaningful way.
And i don't want to play 10 hours having to restart 20 times because of RNG just to maybe get to something i find interesting or new lore.

A lot of folks are complaining, that the traces accumulate too quickly.
I don't think that the traces are the real problem or that slowing down trace generation would help.
It would make the RNG portion a bit easier to handle for sure, but i don't think it would make this DLC any more interesting to play. At least for me.

So yeah, don't get it. Will still play the original occasionally. My kids wont know the difference if they never see the exile content.
Maybe there is a big trick that im missing?

(too lazy for punctuation and casing)

[briant999999]

I agree it’s difficult to figure out, but I think I’m starting to see the general outline of at least some ways to advance the game.

In terms of the Obscurity victory, I noticed that doing a job (specifically the medical job) with max Subtlety (i.e. use the right Aspects to complete it) nets you an Obscurity. So does burning a Trace with two Connections. This suggests doing Subtle jobs and burning traces when feasible until you have enough Obscurity. This means avoiding Reckoners at ALL COSTS, since the first thing they do is munch through your hard-earned Obscurity. Run run run!

I’m not as sure about the fighting victory, although I suspect that it involves engaging your Foe relatively early to learn his weaknesses, building up your Edge Lore using the temples (be careful with that; it seems to me that if you use a Colonel or Lionsmith temple, you lock yourself out of using the other’s temples) to increase it power and reduce its downtime, finding a good mystical weapon, and then choosing the right location to make a stand against him. The “right location” being the one in which you can easily farm his weaknesses, natch. I haven’t done any of this, but I suspect that the end fight is a combination of attacking the Foe with your weapon and Edge Lore, while feeding him weaknesses to distract him and keep him from attacking (since he can crush you in three or four hits).

If I’m right, I think the mechanics actually lend themselves well to both play styles. Part of the difficulty right now is that the game is so new, we don’t really know what the best locations are to get weapons, increase Lore, find followers, and do jobs.

[Defaire]

I just completed the Velvet house achievement myself. What makes it harder is you cannot use a weapon when you have your Obscurity at high value. I had to sake it twice to prevent my cash from being eaten as you also need 30 comfort and farming that was tricky. A trick is to generate Tranquility via Dawn/Night on blue and use 2-4 of those when farming both cash and Obscurity from the Sanitarium (Medical License/Townhome/Stolen Year on Blue).