Okay just to illustrate (even more) the power of temptation (and to show off a bit), here's a 5-day victory against Love at loop 25:
While I don't want to claim that its optimised, I don't think I can get it any lower than this: 2 days to get all 3 tempts, 1 day to get the orgy, 1 day to break all 3 T3 and T4 dignity (with Acceleration), and 1 final day. I don't think a 3EE undead temptress can tempt all 3 chosens without Vengeful Reconstitution, so maybe a +20EE item can make a 3 tempt day 1 possible, but I don't have that. If we are considering the fight only, maybe the last two can be merged, but I lack the EE for Imago Quickening without the T4 break. Now that I'm done a full loop of content, I'll try to make another long post about the entirety of it.
This is the long post of complaints. It’s going to be mostly negative in tone, but by the fact that I played to loop 25 and wrote all these words, I hope it is obvious that I like this game. It’s going to be based on my first and only full campaign run, which went by Reign > Splendor > Reign2 (won) > Victory > Judgment > Love, with maybe 2-3 skipped loops total. This relies heavily on my memory, as I often delete old saves. I can only speak to the content I have seen and interacted with.
In summary:
Temptation is too easy, as it is not affected by loop modifiers
Negotiation gets screwed by loop modifier, though that's mostly fine
I don't know how Propaganda works
Tomorrow's Newspaper is actually fine as-it-is
Megalomaniacs are bad (exception is the angelic ones, since they buff non-megalomaniacs)
Hello, I want to turn my girls against each other, but I have minor problem and I mean it. Well 3 out of 4 of their Minor vulnerabilities are broken up to T2. Now I am not entirely sure how friendship system works, but does that mean I wont be able to turn them agains each other? becose with nearly every break of some core vulnerability there would be already broken minor vulnerability?
Hello, I want to turn my girls against each other, but I have minor problem and I mean it. Well 3 out of 4 of their Minor vulnerabilities are broken up to T2. Now I am not entirely sure how friendship system works, but does that mean I wont be able to turn them agains each other? becose with nearly every break of some core vulnerability there would be already broken minor vulnerability?
You can still break T3 cores before T3 minor and that would work. Friendships are created between A and B when the same level of break is done on A's minor first and then B's core, and rivalries when B's core is broken before A's minor. the higher the tier of break, the bigger the effect on their relationships.
You can still break T3 cores before T3 minor and that would work. Friendships are created between A and B when the same level of break is done on A's minor first and then B's core, and rivalries when B's core is broken before A's minor. the higher the tier of break, the bigger the effect on their relationships.
I see, Do you know how much bigger that effect gets with each next tier? would it be for example enough to compensate earlier T1 and T2 core breaks? Becouse I guess theres long way before T3 and I want to progress, but I feel like it would be hard to do so without any core breaks
I see, Do you know how much bigger that effect gets with each next tier? would it be for example enough to compensate earlier T1 and T2 core breaks? Becouse I guess theres long way before T3 and I want to progress, but I feel like it would be hard to do so without any core breaks
From experience T4 break will easily break any friendship, but I am not certain about T3s. Looking at the decompiled code I don't immediately find an answer, but if the question is just whether you can eventually get them to hate each other, the answer is yes.
Also not going to lie CSDev having the strings hardcoded makes the functions real hard to read quickly.
This is a new master post for portrait packs based on previous Chekhovs_Ghost post, that is not being updated anymore.
It is split in 2 types: art created for packs and existing art collected into packs. These packs are ordered by size and personal recomendation. Basic description provided with extra information found in links to f95 posts, also status&version of some packs, where applies. Note that different conversion packs probably overlap. Rename packs to mix them.
Contemplative Yearning, Patience
Large collection of stable diffusion generated portraits
Full conversion, species variation and civilian outfits included.
The best full substitute for base game portraits in drawn anime style. Needs no extra steps to enjoy. 48 portrait set Details
Chekhovs_Ghost, Suntorn Dawn + Conversion
AI generated
27 new characters, including forsaken and nudity. Includes custom roster.
Digital art style with various background and poses make for a lively and themed character pack. 27 portrait set Details
Conversion pack 10 portraits set Details
DisasterOnLegs, Spectacular Species [Ongoing]
AI generated(perchance, Advance AI Generator)
25 characters, each based on a certain chosen species subtype, includes explicit nsfw artwork.
Digital artstyle with a focus on differing each unique chosen from the rest and with extra spice. 25 portrait set
Packs above in my humble opinion constitute the best choice for enchancing playing experience. Be sure to check others to find the style or execution of the portrait packs you enjoy the most.
Kalloi, [Ongoing] - v1.3
Handmade conversion portrait mod
Conversion with 32 unique chosen, includes extra outfits, hairstyles, forsaken, civilian, all of it.
Truly a titan of a portrait pack, handdrawn by author, giving you quite a few unique options, no other pack gives. Portrait mod Details
Ydennek314, Debased Defenders
AI generated
Full conversion pack, includes species variation and civilian outfit.
Another big conversion, comparable to CY in size and quality with its own style. 48 portraits set Details
If any of the links don't work, send me a message.
If you have a new portrait pack that's not listed here, send me a message and I'll add it. Also applies to authors if you plan to release a new version of a pack. Link you update post if you create one and mention the new version if you have such.
P.S. Thanks to Chekhovs_Ghost and in turn Kalloi that made the original post and for their huge contribution to portrait pack variety.
P.P.S. Abbreviation of portrait pack is pp and I'm laughing like a child. Have fun with your pps
Every lvl of the highest circumctance, applies compounding x1/2 modifier per lvl diffrence on every other circ. that is lower. Simply put, the higher the biggest circ., the harder it is to affect every other circ. lower than it. Example: Lvl 10 Plea has no effect on lvl 10 Hate, gives x1/2 to lvl 9 Expo and give x1/16(2^4) to Lvl 6 Inju. This encouroges player to consider which circ. to target, placing emphasis on balance. Of course with this mechanic you must always target Hate and Inju, as to counteract the modifiers, else you will be slowed down or outright locked out of any more circ. damage. Tip: here's a generic priority targeting (Inju-Hate-Plea-Expo)
So I decided to play again to check out the new bosses and found a bug. Right now if you use Maneuver on a chosen and then release her before the capture runs out and immediately capture another chosen then the chosen is captured for way too long(Probably because on release the capture turns are still remembered as the turn you got to after using Manurver) If you let the capture end naturally it doesn't happen. I am assuming this bug has been in the game for a long while.
I also got "Greater Sins imminent" when only one chosen had appeared in an earlier loop. That has to be a bug right?
Hello! Long time fan of this game. I just managed to complete my first loop with Reign and I think I hit a bug. Or perhaps an oversight would be a better term?
I managed to get Reign on the rampage distortion so I was expecting her to be a pretty long term issue. I figured it would take 3 or so loops to whittle her down by rampaging. However I was a little suprised to get into the final battle and get a message that she is refusing to even fight. It seems the game is treating her as a despair chosen and auto breaking her. I was able to get the fight to work normally by spending enough EE but that stops me from using despair on Honey like I had planned to.
This is my first time using despair on a boss. Do they normally auto break without even joining the fight? Wouldn't that make aversion distortions impossible to complete?
You're right, this is definitely a bug. Skipping the final battle is something Reign is supposed to do when she is under Despair (which, incidentally, instantly defeats any Aversion Chosen at the same time). But I didn't properly check whether Reign was already under another Distortion, which is meant to give immunity to Despair. I'll make sure to fix this during the rework to Despair which is happening this month.
Ok, I see now that it actually regained 3 motivation, So it is normal for a forsaken with low hostility to regain less than 1 point of motivation ?
I suppose it is the first time I end up with forsaken with such low hostility and I thought it was a bug
Sorry for the miscomunication
The tricky thing is that Chosen have two different values which depend on their Hostility: (1) how much Motivation they need to not tantrum, and (2) how much Motivation they cost to deploy into battle. If (1) is higher than (2), then they'll tantrum before they become undeployable, and you won't have to spend any effort on restoring their Motivation unless you have so many Forsaken they lose more from other Forsaken's tantrums than they restore from their own tantrums. But if (2) is higher than (1), then it'll be possible for Forsaken to be demotivated enough that you can't deploy them, but not demotivated enough to actually tantrum.
Hey, thanks for responding! I would argue that the EE thing is honestly one of the less strong things about temptation, my main issue with it would be that it completely ignores any of the other mechanics the game has. To achieve temptation, you need 2 T2 breaks (10K circumstance damage only, no trauma needed; a 3EE forsaken can do that) and 100K PLEA (a 3EE forsaken can also do that, even at 0 angst, so again no trauma needed), and since this occurs within a capture, there is no "defense" against it for any chosen. The EE cost is mostly trivial, so undead, angel and devil's EE limits aren't useful, no surrounds are needed (unlike the orgy requirement for aversion or surround duration for rampage, which can get messed up by either trauma reduction from devil, animalistics or simply loop difficulty), and again, no trauma is needed unlike negotiation. The only ability that hinders this process is animalistics (but you just need to wait until the right time, but its also possible to just bruteforce past a 1/10 reduction). And spitballing random ideas for a moment, maybe making it so tempt is only in surrounds can make it so T3 moves like mating call can stop a tempt from being initiated would help.
It puts temptation at this unique stop where a tempted forsaken can singlehandedly tempt chosen by simply capturing another for EXPO and capturing the victim twice, and then repeat that until the requirement for tempt is low enough that the final fight is a cakewalk as well, especially that tempt ignores resolve. Effectively, 10KPLEA, 10K EXPO and then 100K PLEA instantly wins the game with no other effort needed. One thing that can maybe be done is that tempt is not immediately effective but require a certain duration, like most others, or require the TEMPT action itself to do a certain amount of PLEA for it to trigger, so that damage reduction may matter. Another way is to trauma gate it, but honestly these suggestions make tempt less unique as well, so I'm not sure if they are actually good suggestions.
Another thing that is related is that the grind towards the final fight feels weird, as the requirement reduces every time making it easier to achieve; I have already shown I can reach 100K, 70K is not going to be harder, especially given that tempt can be done in a capture and no T3 move can really stop that. this is mostly present for other distortions as well. Personally, making it so the requirement before the final fight rise exponentially (example: 100K PLEA to 300K, then 1M, etc.) each time while reducing the final fight requirement linearly can make it so that you need to either approach a difficult final fight or you had a few dficult fight leading up to it.
Honestly I might be one of the few autists here that want to make the game harder.
This is somewhat of an intended element of all four of the first Distortion paths, but it does come out most strongly with Temptation. Originally, the only way to defeat Chosen was to inflict a T4 Break, which in turn meant dealing 100M trauma with enough time left in the loop to progress its Punisher to 1000% effectiveness. Once you hit that 100M damage threshold, you were effectively done with the "inflict trauma" part of the game unless you really needed more Evil Energy or wanted to get multiple T4 Breaks for whatever reason. The game's victory condition was essentially built around hitting that 100M damage threshold.
All four of the Distortions were balanced around that number. Aversion requires a long orgy, which will pretty much always hit 100M damage anyway. Negotiation requires 1G ANGST, which means that at least one of the traumas is probably at least 100M. Rampancy requires 15 opening Lvs before the final surround, which usually translates to at least 100M damage provided that some of that time is spent in a Defiler+ or Orgy. And Temptation requires Lv 4 PLEA, which provides x1296 to DISG damage on its own, meaning that you'd only need a bit of HATE to start to approach that 100M damage mark (in practice, activating Tempt causes HATE to go to 0, so you don't end up seeing that much trauma, but if you can reach Lv 4 PLEA without Inseminate or Sodomize, you're almost certainly in a situation where you'd be able to hit 100M trauma just as easily).
With Undead and Angels, "defeating" them with a Distortion isn't meant to be the hard part - they still make their allies harder to defeat even afterward. And Animalistics and Devils have damage reduction which is meant to increase the difficulty of Distorting them just as it increases the difficulty of reaching 100M trauma on them. I have some plans that should make the final two species a bit more difficult to instantly neutralize like this as well.
Regarding making Temptation more and more difficult to trigger multiple times in exchange for making the final battle easier, I believe that managing to get one of these victory conditions (100M trauma or Distortion) with a few days left before the final battle should be "sufficient" to win the loop. Pulling off more tactical brilliances to reach even higher PLEA values is cool, but I want to keep the game's focus on achieving the Distortion in the first place. After you've achieved a Distortion, the main thing you should need to worry about is ensuring that the other two Chosen are defeated as well. Otherwise, the moment of achieving the Distortion becomes a lot less satisfying.
Agreed. I remember the first won single play loop I had where I broke the a T4 on a second chosen one day before the final battle, and then barely won it. I have been chasing the high ever since, and doing sub-10 day loops at 20+ isn't quite doing it for me.
The associated breaks for temptation and the 100EE is enough (assuming you have tomorrow's newspaper, which you should if you want to maximize power) to get at least 2 of Networked Consciousness, Reality Sealing, Soul Resonance or Passion Release, which are the "endgame techs", so to speak, so that you effectively skip the early (I would define this as the T2 break and the 4/2 commanders, for loop 1) and mid (first orgy and T3 breaks) games.
Also since we are spitballing, I would also like to float the idea of making Imago Quickening cost 0EE, and give a damage reduction in the final fight that increases with the the amount of days skipped which can be lowered by donating EE, just to reduce endgame grind while potentially introducing another thing to optimise for.
This is an interesting idea, but my main worry would just be that players would find it counterintuitive. If they see that they can rush straight into the final battle, they might be frustrated to find that suddenly all their moves are dealing less damage than they expected.
Hopefully I am not annoying CSDev with too many random ideas for their game, but another thing that can mitigate this is by making the achievement bonuses more generic. I don't have many averted forsaken so the achievement was never built so I never get more averted forsaken, for example, and making it so the bonuses contribute to multiple potential win conditions makes it so that there is more incentive to get different distortions. That's one of the cool thing I found about Reign.
My intent with the achievements for the first four Distortions was that they'd follow the pattern of "This doesn't make it any easier to activate the Distortion for the first time, but it does make it easier to win once you've done so." I didn't want to add any extra scaling bonuses which had nothing to do with the Distortion.
While I don't want to claim that its optimised, I don't think I can get it any lower than this: 2 days to get all 3 tempts, 1 day to get the orgy, 1 day to break all 3 T3 and T4 dignity (with Acceleration), and 1 final day. I don't think a 3EE undead temptress can tempt all 3 chosens without Vengeful Reconstitution, so maybe a +20EE item can make a 3 tempt day 1 possible, but I don't have that. If we are considering the fight only, maybe the last two can be merged, but I lack the EE for Imago Quickening without the T4 break. Now that I'm done a full loop of content, I'll try to make another long post about the entirety of it.
Impressive! Part of this, I think, is that later loops give you more opportunity to benefit from smart play in earlier loops. Once the "ascension"-type system is implemented, I'll certainly be trying to add some modifiers which make the later loops more challenging even for players like yourself.
This is the long post of complaints. It’s going to be mostly negative in tone, but by the fact that I played to loop 25 and wrote all these words, I hope it is obvious that I like this game. It’s going to be based on my first and only full campaign run, which went by Reign > Splendor > Reign2 (won) > Victory > Judgment > Love, with maybe 2-3 skipped loops total. This relies heavily on my memory, as I often delete old saves. I can only speak to the content I have seen and interacted with.
In summary:
Temptation is too easy, as it is not affected by loop modifiers
Negotiation gets screwed by loop modifier, though that's mostly fine
I don't know how Propaganda works
Tomorrow's Newspaper is actually fine as-it-is
Megalomaniacs are bad (exception is the angelic ones, since they buff non-megalomaniacs)
Achieving Distortions is meant to generally be more difficult and more rewarding. There are a few mechanics which are meant to make it sometimes viable to just get all the T4s: the T4 achievements make things easier on you later in the run, the Forsaken species bonuses are all slightly better when not under a Distortion, and Forsaken with more T4 breaks can be used for more Forsaken Punisher buffs.
I agree that Negotiation has the hardest time at higher loops, particularly because of how Angel Chosen's trauma absorption works. The effect is strong enough that it might deserve its own minor rework.
The idea behind Propaganda is that it solves the ANGST requirement of Negotiation all on its own, so all you need to do is get the T2 Breaks in order to be guaranteed to be able to activate the Distortion. It makes Negotiation easier than all the other Distortions to activate for the first time, but Negotiation is also the Distortion which relies most on multiple activations to make the final battle easier. I'm considering a rework here as well, because its overall usefulness is so variable depending on other factors.
Thanks for the feedback here. I've seen a lot of different opinions about which Distortion is stronger than all the others. Tempted Forsaken have received a couple of buffs recently (in the form of their Defiler being reworked and in the form of their damage bonus coming from Motivation rather than being a flat number), so it's possible that I ended up going too far.
If you're strong enough to be completing loops in a few days, then the Strategic Advantage system doesn't really have a chance to be very relevant. And because it only activates starting in Loop 12, I think that the most skilled players are already snowballing hard at that point. It's another thing that I'll want to examine more closely once the ascension modifiers are in play.
My original drafts for Love and Judgment did indeed give them effectively "double the usual species trait," so that Love was absorbing 99% of trauma and Judgment was able to impose Severe Castigation all by herself. I'm looking forward to implementing the "harder bosses" ascension modifier.
This is a case where it's actually useful to be told "do more of this," since I'm never quite sure how much people like the unique content versus how much they prefer for me to focus on stuff that shows up for generic Chosen too!
Regarding teams of Chosen for campaign mode, there's an option when customizing Chosen for campaign mode where you can set their "Guaranteed Partner"s. If the two Chosen are already valid partners (no personal relationship, at least one Vulnerability of each type, no Vulnerability overlap), this doesn't even disable relationship scenes.
Once the "ascension"-type system is implemented, I'll certainly be trying to add some modifiers which make the later loops more challenging even for players like yourself.
Okay with this it will be an honest to god rogue-like. Absolutely lovely and certainly the thing I'm looking for. Put some "true ending" on the ascension and ta-da, that's a rogue-like bingo. Maybe even unlock an extra final FINAL boss for ascension for that sweet sweet "okay NOW its a final battle" type of shenanigans.
All in All, more smut and continuation of the story to its logical finale, other than that, there is no honest thing I want from the game, what the dev isn't doing alread, so keep at it, tis'a bloody good game
As a personal preference, would it be possible to implement the system closer to Touhou: Lost Branch rather than Slay the Spire, where the modifiers can be picked individually rather than in sequence? I would argue that there is no downside to giving the player more choices regarding difficulty rather than a20, a14 (to avoid the curse) or a0 (which feel like the most common ascensions people play at.)
Also as a tangent, it's kinda wild that just about every single game with any roguelike elements today is influenced by a random indie card game from 2019.
As a personal preference, would it be possible to implement the system closer to Touhou: Lost Branch rather than Slay the Spire, where the modifiers can be picked individually rather than in sequence?
Also as a tangent, it's kinda wild that just about every single game with any roguelike elements today is influenced by a random indie card game from 2019.
And yeah but no. You'll find it's quite a usual way for game design to progress. Doom, Hearthstone, Final Fantasy, Halo, Assasin creed and many many more games developed a mechanic(s) or style of game only for it to become an industry standart. Take what works and do the rest yourself, design 101. Also STS is anything but random indie card game, being literally in top 5 best roguelikes.
A bit more time and my species portrait pack receive several cool additions for the roster. But for now, we are in the "scared boner" territory with this one.
Not a huge thing, but would it be possible to implement a "clean" function for the scenes archives as well? On my loop 25 save several actions, especially opening the save menu, takes a few seconds, and that seems unreasonable for a text based game. By observation I am guessing that the game is trying to search through entire 6MB save on every action, which is mostly archives, and deleting them one-by-one is painful.
Isn't Reign supposed to require a t3 break to get a distortion? I was going for Aversion and was able to trigger it without getting a T1 or T3 break. Now I am wondering whether I should trigger a 9 turn orgy to play it the intended way or should I just roll with it.
Edit: Nevermind it's probably part of the despair bug. I thought to make Reign last even longer you had to get detonate or striptease but seems like I was mistaken. All chosen have "Furthermore you need detonate/striptease" in their distortion descriptions
Btw with the new despair trigger will Reign's Meglomania distortion effect be changed?
Not a huge thing, but would it be possible to implement a "clean" function for the scenes archives as well? On my loop 25 save several actions, especially opening the save menu, takes a few seconds, and that seems unreasonable for a text based game. By observation I am guessing that the game is trying to search through entire 6MB save on every action, which is mostly archives, and deleting them one-by-one is painful.
Not what you asked for but if you open your game to your current save and then rename your saves.sav file to something else and then go back to your game and save, it will create a new saves.sav file which should fix the slow loading issue.
