learning curve?

[jnpoint]

I managed to first discover this game a few days ago. It seems to be exstremly deep and although I love deep gameplay I fear the learning curve. Does the tutorial help you out? I mean there is a lot of stats, numbers etc.

[Strauss]

Nope, its really basic introduction.
Many hidden mechanic you need to learn =.=

[Arctic]

The tutorial introduces some basic stuff as well as a bunch of jumbled up things like Formations and Boss fighting. Most of what you will end up learning is through trial and error and guides. You can check the comments people left on locations and items to see what they do or have a general idea on what they might entail.

[Ray64]

there are a LOT of in-game tutorials, I think it took an hour at least to go through them all. But saying that, the learning curve is still STEEP, it is very steep and very tall.

yes trial and error is ultimately the only way to learn, this is especially true because of how unintuitive and stuff is and it is compounded in that many things do not have proper feedback, like I just found out that wicked flux gives a permanent reduction to mental state, an effect that is NOT clearly communicated from the description of the consumeable nor from guides i have read and I only noticed it cause I was trial and erroring and checking what all was happening.

[jnpoint]

Is the game rewarding then or do you over time just give up on some or a lot of features?

[Aargh Tenna]

Like other games in this category - ONI e.g., you just restart and restart until you get it right. Or decide to stop restarting and make do with your mistakes.

[Arctic]

Originally posted by jnpoint:

Is the game rewarding then or do you over time just give up on some or a lot of features?

Mentally speaking, the game feels very rewarding when you kill bosses, make a beefy cultivator, conquer sects, etc. You just have to dedicate a bunch of time micro-ing things to get it all right, especially when dealing with Immortal mode. Other than that, you can create your own cultivators and download mods to supplement what you feel can be lacking from the game.

[jnpoint]

Thanks for the answers. I got the game and I am working my way through the tutorial.

[Chronie]

The tutorials only cover the very basics. This is all you really need for most of the game. Most of the descriptions have been translated from Chinese and are not 100% accurate. If the game even hints of a warning SAVE, test and Reload.

Most people do not look deeper into a game mechanics beyond the basic information provided and do not need to. The discord server has enough information to play the game however there are still gaps in the information it provides. If you keep digging you can find out some interesting things.

For example Fengshui works everywhere (I do mean everywhere)
Auspicious means Qi is generated by the object
Ominous means it is destroyed by the object
Qi is needed to trigger some events.
If you build the sect carefully people could eventually cultivate almost anywhere.
You can get over 300 Qi quite easily outside cultivation rooms.

Do not get very auspicious in every place you can prioritize what you need or you will attract powerful enemies to attack you.
I also deliberately have Low Fengshui areas for the unlisted benefits it can provide.
I have made the Qi of the entire sect rise to the point where it is more trouble than it is worth.

[Galroche]

more like a learning cliff ^^
luckily there are many guide made by people for about everything.

[Rynea]

Honestly, theres no big learning curve playing the game, the way the mechanics are implemented is just complicated. So you pretty much have a learning curve what the Devs want to tell you with the information they let you know.

It all builds up on the very same few principles, mostly related to their element feng shui wheel. The problem is, that the game is exceptionally bad in showing whats going on, and telling you how to go about things. It's like those gacha games that tell you to click here and there, but doesn't ever explain the reasoning behind what you're doing.

People are supposed to do and build in certain ways, but there is no interface telling the proper numbers, telling them what it even does in the first place and why things run the way they do. The tutorial isn't very helpful in most situations either as it explains a few basics, but the game lives off of details to make things work. Details that are crucial yet missing in the tutorials.

For example, you will find lots of guides telling you about how to setup your room's feng shui. There is barely anyone who can tell you actual numbers though.

How much does a regular wooden decoration give me in the wooden element stat compared to a spiritwood decoration? Do I make two of one to replace the other?

The game tells you to find a balance between an empty room and a cramped full room, but you find no stats or information on what is considered as cramped or empty. You only see some vague info once you've already built it.

The people want better clothing, but what exactly do they consider as good enough?

The game tells you how to make artifacts, but there is barely any information out there what stats you could consider, what most stats do and what makes a good or a bad artifact. Is an artifact with 100 in a certain stat good? Perhaps 10, or 1000? The descriptions and tiers are vague at best and don't help you much to differentiate between the good and the bad.

For trading you throw things into the window you want to buy from others and you have not even a clue what they want for it. Then you add spirit stones or other material sometimes over dozens of tries just to figure out what they even want.

The doing in whatever you want to achieve in the game itself is usually simple and in a way it is fun to play around with the whole feng shui idea. I like that part. It's easy to make clothing, its easy to make tools to build different elemental furniture pieces. The doing is simple. Just lacks the detailed information on how to put pieces together.

While other games like Rimworld would simply tell you "this item gives +2 to wood element" while on another you find "this item will give you +4 to wood element" and you can then make decisions on how to build based on these, ACS keeps you guessing.

You can then decide to just have ten bazillion retries or make prepared builds which just work the way they should on the first try. I'm neither a fan of prepared things nor a friend of ripping down pieces because the game doesn't give me some information before I build and place things.

This game would really profit a lot from a planning mode for buildings, where you can place buildings and decorations and then get an idea what the feng shui etc looks like before you actually commit to it all and build it.

[Victoria Raverna]

This game is about being xianxia cultivators. Cultivators are about figuring out what the world or universe is about, how to take advantage of the hidden rules of the universe. Cultivators know the rules by learning from other cultivators or reading knowledge books written by other cultivators or by testing and figure it out yourself.

Fengshui is not that hard, but you need to know that a lot of things affect fengshui elements. They give you tool to figure it out. At first it is just guess work and about basic rules about which relation between elements. You don't know if your room has correct fengshui or not but then once you start a sect, you can build something to show you more info that can help you in figure out and perfect the fengshui.

[Rynea]

Well there are no proper tools thats the issue. Figuring out something for the first time is nice, but once you have done it 10000 times and you still have no means to have a proper way, not because of lore, but because of a lack in game design, thats sadly a different thing.

The observatory is mostly useless and doesn't tell you any proper info, same as the other gimmicks that are supposed to help, but really show you nothing worthwhile. It's enough tools if you want to make things work 'somehow', but once you get to the point where somehow just doesn't make ends meet you're either forced into spending insane amounts of time to fiddle around or you go for cookie cutter builds.

Once you have interlinked buildings with 3,4 or even 5 elements whenever you change things on one end of your sect with often dozens of rooms, you pretty much have to adapt all the others as well. Changing a single road flooring in between rooms can often have an impact and needs slight adjustments for the whole thing, often eating up 1-2 hours just to adapt everything again ranging from element adjustments, to lighting adjustment to spacing adjustments, to temperature adjustments.

Thats a lot of work just to change some floor tiles on a road.