*Spoilers* Harder difficulty please?

[slobby]

Does anyone else feel that the game should be harder?

Dread/fascination/hunter are all well and good, but there seems to be a serious lack in endgame difficulty.

1) Commissions - once you have all 4 patrons active you'd might as well quit your job and retire. Maybe instead of having them ask from 2-6, have them ask for 2-14 and the rewards as follows, 2-4 iron coin, 6-8 bronze, 10-12 silver, 14 gold. Or maybe give them a finite amount of coins to give out per game.

2) Explorations - I feel the get 10 and cake walk it approach is off. Especially since the summons have 6+ in a particular skill. There should always be a chance to fail imo. It would make the game more interesting. When I first started playing I remember the anticipation of sending low level peeps on explorations and watching them die. It was dope. Now I just make sure I have 10s in for the challenges and snooze, I'd like that feeling of anticipation back. :)

3) Dealings with the supernatural - In respect to the marks (3+), I feel that if you don't have the requirement when the craving verb timer ends you should actually lose passion/reason/health whatever, not just exhaust it (I know about losing the marks - its just not enough).

Similarily, when you fail a summoning and there's a breach those summons should do something besides just grabbing something for X secs and then giving it right back, no harm done. If they grab a cultist have them kill it or make it insane. If they grab your health have them destroy it or atleast give an affliction, or fascination/dread. Something.

[xenxander]

You're telling us that because you now know the game, and power-play it, you're bored.

That's your business. The game has great balance.

I would however like to see a cool-down on decilples when you use them in missions or occult business in town - say 30 seconds.

[Ryan Dorkoski]

I love the game, and to an extent agree with OP - but more content is coming. And in this game, content = difficulty (figuring out said content). We know for a fact more content is coming. There is also that ungettable achievement that will be resolved soon too.

[Faey]

1) By the time you've finished buying out the two stores, studying the books, recruiting and promoting a decent number of followers, you should be pretty much set for most of the game if you spend that time just painting with Notoriety.

2) AK did mention somewhere about maybe adding Lost and Injured aspects for Followers as possible results of failed challenges/cult business, rather than just Death, and commented that if he did that he'd need to rebalance expedition challenges.

3) These are the first 3 of MANY possible endings to come. We have been promised Paradox-level DLC (that's a lot, incase you aren't familiar with them). Having perminant loses due to desire timers just means not starting your desire path until you're ready to persue victory. No really increase in difficulty there.

Breached summonings are bugged atm, they're suppose damage the card (health to decreptitude, reason to dread, follower to lunatic, etc). They're working on fixing this.

[xenxander]

Breached summonings can destory artifacts used in their ritual. I lost the strong lv.12 lantern mirror in a failed "It has escaped" moment, when summoning Teresa.

[Prometheus]

Rogue summons have been fixed. At least for me they have. So I've stopped trying to passion summons. Its not that hard to get influences for them so if I have to try again so be it. Better than potentially scuppering a run.

Also if you use a summon as the helper in a Sunset Rite and have to reason away the summon you reset the timer on the helper. So its very easy to keep big bads like Crucible around.

[Simonson [29th Ret.]]

Congratulations. You beat the game.

[karasielvenlied]

Do speedruns. it's a card game after all and one session shouldn't last for hours.
Also it would be nice to randomize obstacles of the expeditions.

[xenxander]

Originally posted by karasielvenlied:

Do speedruns. it's a card game after all and one session shouldn't last for hours.
Also it would be nice to randomize obstacles of the expeditions.

It's very difficult to 'speed run' this game.
You're at the mercy of RNG for artifacts and such and you have to do enough grinding for the proper cultists.

[karasielvenlied]

Originally posted by xenxander:

It's very difficult to 'speed run' this game.
You're at the mercy of RNG for artifacts and such and you have to do enough grinding for the proper cultists.

Common gameplay for Cultist's Simulator is just stockpiling everything until you're ready Ascend. This is ok for your first playthrough (exploration of everything, etc), but when you know the game, you can optimize your path to victory, utilizing the best option, which RNG gave you. And there's a lots of them in this game.

[kaibarnard]

One thing I have to say - the risky explorations would make me farm more summons and be a pain juglging them in talk and explore verbs, painting them to keep them around, as followers are too rare and precious to risk - ever

IF there was less perma-iinsta-never coming back death - then fine, if deciples were limited to 2 of each class and could be replaced, or got wounded, or imprissoned or fined, causing time lost in verbs and funds not insta death almost always then this is fine - curses mind you should stay the same OR be reversable some way - agian time funds and resourced

Commisons are OK but

1) The iron ones suck for time to reward and you have to grind them out
2) Bronze ones are OK, not OP just OK - good paiting will on par probably beat these 2 and be more consistant
3) Silvers are really worth it - so you're fishing for these

It also then ties up the explore verb cashing in, halting back to back expisitions to keep summons running, also in total a commision costs you

2x10 talk verb
1x60 Work
1x30 Auction

That's 110 seconds - plus the time unpacking and packing (art suffers this too mind, physcian doesn't)

So baseline physican gives 3.67 coins in one commison cycle with a lot less manual work and not using 3 verbs at various times

3) The marks are your final run, you shoudl have it all planned out anyway and it would just mess with newer players to perma drain reason or passion, that's just dickery for dickery sake - it adds little

And summons now, they break loose you slam a reason in hard and fast unless it's a realy do or die summon, even then....I seriosuly doubt I'd risk it and rather wait

[slobby]

There have been some interesting replies so far and thinking on things a bit I still think the game needs to be harder. Don’t get me wrong it’s a fun little game, and I’ve definitely got my moneys worth, it’s just that maybe saying the game is a roguelike is my issue. Personally I play roguelikes (dcss/tome/coq/cogmind/etc), roguelites (BoI/EtG/StS/DD/etc), and games with rogue elements like Thea. There’s a commonality in them, which is difficulty/challenge and replayability, which I feel is lacking in cultist simulator.

A couple of replies in this thread have been summoning has been fixed always play reason on a breach! To which I shake my head. There was another thread on these forums where the op asked for the cheat command because they were about to lose. To which I also shook my head. To each their own, but for me personally it’s roll the dice and what happens happens. I find it boring to have an I win button every time I boot the game.

One person responded saying that I was power playing the game. Valid, but why would I not? The run that I just started I chose doctor and thought, you know maybe I should do a challenge run and be a beggar…that didn’t last long (the begging that is). There are quite a few traps in the game like that (decrepit/poppy/etc) where they get you in the beginning, but then are easily overcome (when was the last time anyone let an affliction or injury go through?) or you don’t even consider as a valid option later (manual labor). That’s sort of my issue. When you first play the game, you have all these lovely choices, but as you get better you realize that you really don’t. There’s also nothing driving you onward, you can literally just sit back and grind and grind and grind without fear of losing.

I know about the plethora of DLC that may come (I bought the perpetual edition), and hopefully the first few aren’t so much fluff/flavor, but more meat and potatoes for the game mechanics/challenge/replayability. That said there’s supposed to be heavy mod support coming up, and maybe that’ll be more for me. And maybe not, maybe this game will just be like A House of Many Doors for me, where I just fire it up from time to time, relax, explore, and enjoy the theme/writing.

A perfect experience (for me) happened in one run. Where I was up against Connie and had quite a bit of notoriety sitting on the board.

She made tentative evidence.
I sent my raw prophet to steal it.
Fail.
I was then debating on whether or not to kill her and decided to sick my hint on her.
She got pulled away on a notoriety check and made damning evidence.
I definitely sent my hint after her.
Fail.
I started dreaming again to get more summons, and another notoriety check went through.
She was taking me to court.
Ah! But that’s ok, I have the favour from my earlier dreams trying to get more summons.
I play that.
Fail.
Dream at the stag door! Dream Dream Dream!!
Nothing comes up in time. I was going to prison.
My last dream comes through while the game is coming to an end.
A favour.
Too little, too late. I lost.
10/10 would lose like that again.

[kaibarnard]

Given the chance of it killing a unique irreplaceable minion, you are darn right given the current way the game runs I slam in a reason - you want to roll the dice, you roll um

I've only cheated once, early days still learning as I wanted to get a run going - ended up arrested

I think the 'risk' on loosing minons is too great given how important and irreplaceable they are - this is my chief frustration at the game, it's not cultist simulator - but bubblewrap simulator

Personally either minons need to be replaceable, or repairable, then I can take educated risks, is this summon worth a 30% chance of tying up talk verb for 1 minute losing me 2 funds and timeing out a minon for 3 minutes....or will I just close them down

Is risking this minon on cult buisness worth the fine, or farming up a favour for, or the time out or the chance of facination etc...going after tentative evidence, chance to get it moved to a safer location (can't be interacted with for 120 seconds while you find acess to it again), and the minon gets caught, maybe only trespassing (fine) or in the act (incarcerated - until favor farmed up) minon gets spooked and runs off (not useable for 180 seconds but no ill affect) or succeds

I could also see mini rivals, if you start using minons to kill or abduct too much there's a chance a police task force starts looking into the missing people, and you have to redirect that or face a growing threat of exposure

Right now cake...OR DEATH....is never worth rolling the dice on

I love me some options, and risk vs reward, but right now using minons on cult buisness is no buisness as there's no buisness using cult buisness

[Cultist]

Originally posted by slobby:

I was then debating on whether or not to kill her and decided to sick my hint on her.
She got pulled away on a notoriety check and made damning evidence.

You can avoid this by talking to the investigator about the minion instead of the other way around. They can't run off if you lock them in place, but cards that are the subject of another card are not locked in place unless they've been pullet in by a magnet.

Also, and this is slightly exploit-ey, you can just literally grab her card and hold it to prevent her from doing anything. However, this also stops you from doing anything, as you can't interact with anything else while holding a card.