Loop 17, where all the choices are bad...
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I was a fair bit luckier with my loop 15 than SuperSkippy- the mitigation was only in the 30's, though I had to pass up a much better item to go there. L16 wasn't dreadful either, 20 day time limit but I could've been done by d14 if I'd been less pedantic about setting up and breaking all the vuln's. I imagine L17 would be possible but I need a break and I think I'd have to leave chosen behind which would ruin my record. This demon lord is satisfied with his work for now.
I'd apologise for the terrible puns/naming, but I'm not actually sorry.
Excellent work Zargal!
![Big grin :D :D](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
Sorry for replying sooner, I've been hyper focused on finishing the portrait pack before the end of March, but I did take a look at your save by the time I reacted to your post and just want to say first and foremost that using the suntorn dawn pack is no problem! However you have been disqualified on grounds on the sheer number of puns in your game have been legally classified as a hate crime against comedy. Take solace with the Evil you've put into the world and know the authorities will come for you soon
Jokes aside entry is valid and thank you so much for participating in the competition!
Items
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The 10k items were vital to my strategy and I think I picked up the Exp one L5 so I did well there. Other than the Pants though it was a rather meh haul.
Similiar to superskippy's first run, it was a bit disappointing that you couldn't come across the distortion item for the one distortion you were specializing in the most. I wonder how much the Green Fairy Dust item would have helped in your playthrough.
Forsaken
- Basically I used a bunch of tempted in various damage configurations which could then switch to tempt as needed. These I upgraded to animalistics as I went and had a variety of costs as well, with my 4EE, Inj/Exp being my mainstay.
- I also had an undistorted undead who did all injury and cost 1EE, she could usually break inj straight away and get me through the early rounds cheaply. With the 2 10k circ items, that left only pleasure as my weak point and with such a temptation heavy team, I could get that easily enough on day 4. Still, would have liked to have found a day 1 solution.
- I experimented with an undead rampancy, I just never quite realized her potential I think- I always seemed to have a better choice. Still, I liked having her as an option and tantrums aren't nearly the disaster I thought.
- My rampant animalistic experiment never quite got off the ground, the theory of an orgy specialist was good but again I don't think I used her properly and could never justify the cost vs a 4circ commander.
- Because I never got the psychomter (L17 notwithstanding), I ended up going with undead punishers, focusing on damage and motivation increases which I was fairly happy with. I could have min-maxed this better but oh well.
- In that vein, I was very lazy with training once they had the distributions I wanted, but seeing Superskippy's goons, I see I cheated myself out of about 10% damage. Oh well again.
My last loop I used a good chunk of my roster so I'm happy with how it turned out.
Some thoughts upon looking at your save it's once again fascinating to see the differences in playstyles not only from super skippy, nightclaw, and your playstyles, but seeing the differences in my own as well. Temptation might be the second to last distortion I use in my playthroughs with the last being rampancy (although that placement is due to rampancy's traits leading to more unruly forsaken then I'd like than simply preference) So your strategy outline and save having so many temptation forsaken in play is really awesome to witness! Even the usage of undistorted forsaken in your roster caught my eye (Miss Queef sticks out particularly as that undead forsaken you used for day 1 sodomizing)
My personal opinion is I believe expertise training beyond getting the appropriate fighting style does feel worth it, even if at times I just use it as excuse to continue training a certain forsaken or give my trainer something during breaks. A neat trick I've found for getting some more expertise out of a forsaken is once a trainer distributes all of the expertise to the designated damages, I do a training session with that forsaken and raise the neglected damage types, this typically adds expertise even with the mid-tier training actions instead of redistributing expertise. Once that forsaken has gotten an influx of expertise damage I set them back on their previous training plan so the trainer can distribute the new expertise damage to her proper fighting type, works exceptionally well with aversion forsaken as a result of their naturally low deviancy, with one of my forsaken I've gotten close to 900k expertise with a few of her damage types.
General Strategy
Quickly break the cores using items and specialist forsaken to rake in a bunch of EE. from breaks and rivalries.
Target battle elongation researches and rush network consciousness.
Go for a 10 turn orgy to get the T3's started.
Use either general type forsaken to get a whole lot of moves used or target a specific one with a specialist.
Decide whether a "complete" commander was needed to get a 15 turn orgy going. This was the laggiest part of my runs and so I avoided if possible.
Grab one 100EE + move (taunt+ ended up my favourite) and antipathy (I nearly always rivaled them up).
Use punishers, trying to limit the number of times they'd be needed.
Final battle (remember to save!)
I've always skewed towards friendships if possible but seeing how direct and effective this strategy is, I'm interested in trying a campaign run where I intially focus on building out my roster first and then afterwards go for a scorched earth style just to see how far I can go, two of my most noticable things I have against my own playthroughs is 1. I get too invested in the corruption storyline aspect of a chosen team so I tend to draw things out or go out of my way for specific corruption methods like ensuring a demon commander body is the first one to eve sodomize a chosen, etc. 2. I don't want any of my chosen to kill each other or have a T4 escape ending so the moment I see that as an inevitability I become disinterested in my campaign save. I don't really think these aspects need fixing but I do genuinely want to see if I fully let loose one of these days, maybe before boss chosen are introduced. apologies for the minor tangent lol
Stray Thoughts
- I think SuperSkippy and I have different strategies and they were both viable, so that's the mark of good design. Nice work CSdev! The items are also a big factor in how you'll play, but as seen, even a mediocre acquisition can be worked with.
- On that note, I'm none the wiser as to what influence actually indicates. Is it how much influence you gain from that city or is it the cost of the item? Could there be a running total on the item page?
- I found Undead much easier to deal with than animalistics, probably more on par with superiors. The EE drain isn't bad unless you let the loop drag on and while their T3 abilities are nasty, they can be dealt with. I'm really looking forward to the "exhausted" change to stop a broken undead just spamming enervation though!
- On the flipside, animalistic forsaken seem to have more utility after you fill the low cost slots of the roster.
- Is it possible to have the Forsaken page as a spreadsheet style thing? It would be great to have cost, damage type, training plan all on the one page. Having "unassign all" and and a button to implement everyone's planned training would also be great.
- Level 5 sacrifice fired on 42 when it says the threshold is 60.
- PSA: You don't need to buy the punisher research (eg. hypnosis) to get the associated T4 training after winning the final battle. They unlock automatically in the "offseason". Saved myself so much time from this.
- I think a grid style page to view all your forsaken's deployment costs, training, and damage would be really helpful as well, especially for rosters with a large amount of forsaken available. I would love for an unassign all button as well. Additionally, for training plans that increase disgrace, I think next to the report of the associated forsaken, showing the EE cost next to it would be fantastic in finetuning deployment costs, would be great for hostility and obedience too but I want it for disgrace more than anything else
- For some reason re-reading your post now made me realize I should probably replicate this sacrifice bug on my end for confirmation and report it to CSDev, don't know why I didn't think of this until now, maybe the puns broke my brain earlier before lmao, anyways ty for reporting it, I'll let CSDev know with a message
- Seeing this PSA along with the question about the release ability superior chosen and beyond have reminds me that most of things I believe to be common knowledge about the game is actually really obscure since the average player hasn't been playing every release and reading the changelog like the psycho that I am, I wonder if I should compile these minor things into a document for people to see so they won't have to find these things out through stumbling across this in a forum or after scouring through changelogs
Either way it was fun seeing your invasion trail demon lord, I hope you feel proud of your work! And if you decide to make another full campaign run I hope it goes even better than this one!
![Big grin :D :D](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)