Java Cultivation Spiral [Release 2d - Justice] [CSdev]

[tabernakle]

I don't see any review dated 10/20/2025?

Neither do I right now. I don't think the reviewer deleted it so I guess some moderator deleted it even though it didn't violate any of the reviewing rules ?

 

[TheToadEmperor]

Actually, I just realized I could zip it. My brain wasn't working. See if this works?

This run isn't perfect though. I haven't found the time to adjust the MOL upgrade for wetworks until it's at the point that I can both have self destructive on all the time, and still beat paladin before d100. Also during one of the plane trips I was testing if ostentatious clothes work on the middle part of the plane trip, it did not

Dunno if you tried this or not, but do you have time to grab hard stimulants in the run? It's how you bypass high wetworks to still enable self-destructive.

And while your probably don't have time for this, Loner is really, really good in Metropolis since self-destructive basically covers nothing relevant.

 

[TofuCircle]

Dunno if you tried this or not, but do you have time to grab hard stimulants in the run? It's how you bypass high wetworks to still enable self-destructive.

And while your probably don't have time for this, Loner is really, really good in Metropolis since self-destructive basically covers nothing relevant.

I think that's Lancia's morning action? Not sure, though if it is, morning action always gets taken up by airplane arrival so no time

 

[TofuCircle]

I just saw the syndicate uniform scene for the first time. It's weird that it hasn't shown up before. The only difference I can see is that I switched from completing the action with body armor + generous to ostentatious clothes + self destructive.

 

[Cryomaniac]

I just saw the syndicate uniform scene for the first time. It's weird that it hasn't shown up before. The only difference I can see is that I switched from completing the action with body armor + generous to ostentatious clothes + self destructive.

I think I still haven't seen it myself. The only reason for this I can think of is that the previous goal in the chain got overcompleted such that both it and the syndicate uniform goal got finished together, thus only playing 1 cutscene and skipping the other.

 

[random_hypothesis]

So...Going through all the comments about people speedrunning the game, I definitely have realized I need help.

I am currently on loop 10. 682 MoL spent. Athletics 15, Drive 10, Frugality 7, Instinct 3, Adrenaline 5, Confidence 1.
I keep hitting a wall trying to either leave the city, or get the research assistant feat. I keep running out of time for both and need advice on how to push forward.

 

[Zomnus]

Actually, I just realized I could zip it. My brain wasn't working. See if this works?

This run isn't perfect though. I haven't found the time to adjust the MOL upgrade for wetworks until it's at the point that I can both have self destructive on all the time, and still beat paladin before d100. Also during one of the plane trips I was testing if ostentatious clothes work on the middle part of the plane trip, it did not

I find Handheld Device is a great option for the second day travel. Pushes Focus to another level or two while you're between. Makes Tower a lot easier to finish up in time, assuming you don't blitz it early (which I'm pretty sure you wouldn't in an end-game MoL grind setup). Someone suggested Larceny but I have no idea why; all Finance upgrades are easy to crack without it.

So...Going through all the comments about people speedrunning the game, I definitely have realized I need help.

I am currently on loop 10. 682 MoL spent. Athletics 15, Drive 10, Frugality 7, Instinct 3, Adrenaline 5, Confidence 1.
I keep hitting a wall trying to either leave the city, or get the research assistant feat. I keep running out of time for both and need advice on how to push forward.

From memory it took about ~3-4 loops for me to get over the wall to unlock your next MoL upgrade. That upgrade skyrockets you from your ~mid-game to end run. I wouldn't worry too much about what speedrunners are doing if your goal is your first end-game run. There's a lot of min-maxing strats that will be too difficult to pull off without knowing the future (i.e., knowing what you next goal is). What I will say is, focus on one goal. I could be wrong (it's been many months), but I'm pretty sure Tower is your best friend.

 

[Cryomaniac]

I find Handheld Device is a great option for the second day travel. Pushes Focus to another level or two while you're between. Makes Tower a lot easier to finish up in time, assuming you don't blitz it early (which I'm pretty sure you wouldn't in an end-game MoL grind setup). Someone suggested Larceny but I have no idea why; all Finance upgrades are easy to crack without it.



From memory it took about ~3-4 loops for me to get over the wall to unlock your next MoL upgrade. That upgrade skyrockets you from your ~mid-game to end run. I wouldn't worry too much about what speedrunners are doing if your goal is your first end-game run. There's a lot of min-maxing strats that will be too difficult to pull off without knowing the future (i.e., knowing what you next goal is). What I will say is, focus on one goal. I could be wrong (it's been many months), but I'm pretty sure Tower is your best friend.

Ah I only went with larcency because handheld completely escaped my mind haha. Aside from it, Larcency was the only thing that came to my mind that gave *something* passively where ostentatious clothes didn't work. I think handheld is probably loads better than larcency kit tho yeah

 

[TofuCircle]

So...Going through all the comments about people speedrunning the game, I definitely have realized I need help.

I am currently on loop 10. 682 MoL spent. Athletics 15, Drive 10, Frugality 7, Instinct 3, Adrenaline 5, Confidence 1.
I keep hitting a wall trying to either leave the city, or get the research assistant feat. I keep running out of time for both and need advice on how to push forward.

I uhh, don't really remember when I was there, because it's been... almost a whole year. I'm just gonna list things I know and hope it helps. You're gonna have to sort out the advice into stuff useful for you and useless to you based off what you can accomplish during your loops

Hashimoto questline leads to Debate action, which provides Self Destructive stance (+100 stamina's worth of goal and stat progress for actions requiring 40 or more stamina). This combos really good with Eye Catching Attire (Tanaka questline) or Ostentatious Clothes (DuMont mansion work questline). Some actions are below 40 stamina, but get raised to 40 stamina with those clothes

The earlier parts of Hashimoto and DuMont questlines also leads to Larceny Kit and Generous, which combos well for goal progress

Following DuMont's club questline tells you about a job in Metropolis and gives you an alternate language learning option in the afternoon(?). The best part is this action costs 45 stamina if you equip any of the two clothes, so you can combo with Self Destructive and finish it fast. Much faster than the other actions for studying in your room by yourself. Though you could also just do both of them

Completing Hashimoto's questline (finding the truth in the tower) should give you an MOL upgrade for academics? It's pretty hard since it's a 250k goal I think. But academics lvls increase how much stats you get from actions, and the upgrade increases how much it increases stat gain, so super useful!

If you don't have enough stamina to be spamming high cost actions with clothes and self destructive, you can just use larceny kit and generous. Just abandon DuMont's questline after you unlock generous / get enough finance lvls to use larceny kit. The extra goal progress and free daily finance xp from larceny kit should be enough to get you to Metropolis if you have high enough finance discount

Master Your Popularity goal buffs stat gain based off your Charisma lvl. Matters if you will get high Charisma and can complete that goal without spending too many days on it

If you don't think you can complete DuMont's club questline and unlock the other learning language path in time. I think train focus and stamina, rush larceny and generous first, then use those to do Hashimoto's questline and Jackal's investigation. Remember to spend your health on stand guard and stuff. Self Destructive needs 20 hp or below to activate. The MOL upgrade for Wetworks actually makes it harder to use Self Destructive. Eye Catching Attire or Ostentatious Clothes + Self Destructive some tower actions to get academics up, the higher the level the more stats you get! Then it's focus time, game dev with Yumeno should cost 75 stamina. Lots of focus and Yumeno relation! Then spend the rest of your loop grinding the study action with larceny kit and generous

 

[Cryomaniac]

Alright I replaced larcency during transit flights with handheld. Ended up with 2 extra levels of focus by the end of the loop. Was definitely worth it. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[TofuCircle]

I'm about to reach Impatience 45. I'm very very slowly making my way to impatience 250

Also I've realized I could probably do Ruler more times. With every upgrade I push the flight 1 day earlier, but I still keep the mentality that there's not enough days left for a flight there and back. Even though I have around 8 days free now?

I'm still waiting for the update that makes the planner actually useful. The issue with optimizing loops after MOL upgrades this late into the game is it takes a while between upgrades so I forget. Then I change one action and suddenly a whole bunch of actions 10 days later no longer work. So I basically have to do a manual loop with no changes, just to understand the why behind everything, and then start a new loop and change stuff.

Having a calendar of the whole loop laid out and all the actions and goals completed and stats/relations gained on each day would be super useful

Also there's still the issue where pausing auto bugs it for the loop, it'll be off by one day and eventually mess up the whole loop. Pausing auto in a scene does not have this issue

 

[TofuCircle]

So I originally replaced saving Tanaka action with game dev, but I just realized even failing to save her increases progress for the investigation. Which means I can go to Metropolis even earlier! Potentially

 

[Rimuru154]

So, it turns out, after 763 loops, the game starts to slow dramatically
I wonder why?

 

[random_hypothesis]

Is there some kind of wiki for the game? I'm curious to figure out which MOL bonuses to work towards to make the runs easier, and feel like I keep making the same mistakes, especially losing too much time in early game.

On that same subject, what MOL bonuses can be unlocked?

For future posters, here are the ones I found

Athletics: Increases the stamina gain from vitality. Unlocked at start?

Drive: Increases the effectiveness of focus. Unlocked at start?

Confidence: Unlocks Bar from start. Unlocked by befriending Tanaka before day 32 (AKA Reliable Feat)?

Frugality: Action and upkeep Finance xp costs reduced. Unlocked by receiving invitation to country club (AKA Budget Blue Blood Feat)?

Adrenaline: Gives free relationship, attribute, goal progress based on level of trait and ORIGINAL health cost of action (so wetwork and body armor doesn't reduce it). Unlocked by determining where Tanaka was taken (AKA Investigator feat)?

Instinct: Increases the health loss reduction of wetwork. Unlocked by earning Scarred body by doing enough skid row guard work (AKA Battle Tested Feat).

Intelligence: Increases the attribute gain of Academics. Unlocked by starting to participate in Helig's endurance tests (AKA Research Assistant Feat)

Magnetism: Increases the relationship gain of Charisma. Unlocked by finding Tanaka in Metropolis (AKA Savior Feat)

Impatience: Unknown effects. Unlocked by meeting Helig's protege while exploring The Tower after Hashimoto gives you an access card (AKA Truthseeker Feat).

Cunning: Unknown effects. Help ??? get a position in government after the event on day 150 (AKA Collaborator Feat).

Restlessness: Unknown effects. Upgrade Cause Trouble to x14 financial and 100 health cost (AKA Most Wanted Feat).

Clarity: Unknown effects. Defeat ??? before day 150 (AKA Nemesis Feat).


Edit: I just learned about the instruction feature from Hall of Fame. I kinda feel like an idiot now.

Edit: added Magnetism and its information. Added Impatience, Cunning, Restlessness, Clarity. Will add information what they do when I unlock them.

 

[TofuCircle]

So, it turns out, after 763 loops, the game starts to slow dramatically
I wonder why?
View attachment 5418526

Save file size, I think. I'm 1,642 loops in and my save file is 22+ mb



Also I would like to talk about MYP goal. If I complete it and do charity, there's 13k progress. But if I don't complete MYP and do charity, there's 9.9k progress. It took me a bit to remember MYP doesn't just increase stats gained, it increases relation lvl effects, which also increases related goal progress.

After some thinking, maybe with high enough MOL focus upgrade, I can get MYP done early, then speed through DuMont's questline and fly off to Metropolis BEFORE Tanaka gets kidnapped. Then... will there be 2 Tanakas?

Edit: I've managed to get on the plane day 44. I could do day 43, but I needed an extra day to get the fasting diet for the paladin fight near the end. I might give up on fasting it turns out I need just one more spare day to get two more ruler feats done

 

[TofuCircle]

I now earn 1,959 MOL per loop. Also I realized my current MOL power upgrade isn't good enough, so near the end of the loop I start needing 2 days to complete the Ruler feat. So I could just delay getting Fasting diet until then

 

[CSdev]

started a new loop and my stamina got bugged, so now I can't do shit
View attachment 5349096

Whenever something like this happens, if you send me the currentSave.sav file, I might be able to fix it.

Weird, I didn't see it. Though I was relying on auto to get me to the new scenes while I did other stuff. Guess I'll play through it again manually. (Edit: I did not see that goal. Probably because I completed multiple goals at once.)

I just remembered how Heilig said we auto-pilot to the places where we need to be and only wake up when around certain people. Did Lancia notice any of that? I assume she kept an eye on us to prepare for her betrayal.

Lancia considers the protagonist to be kind of a weirdo from the day you meet. (Fortunately, she likes weirdos. (Not enough to let them get in her way, though.))

Tanaka's all shaken up from being made to murder people, which is why she hesitates when it comes to coming back with us, yes? What happens if we reach Metropolis fast? I could probably get there before day 50 if I wanted. Got there on day 56 this run, and that's just because I did a bunch of side quests before going

The next couple of releases are going to give a lot more insight into Tanaka's mindset in the Metropolis.

I'm actually very proud of my L5 Truthseeker loop. It took a few days to figure out. I ended up having to go back to Loop 4 to get a few more MoL to upgrade Athletics one more time, which is what made the difference.

I'm hoping to beat CSDev's record for Nemesis sometime in the next few weeks. Once it is and it's submitted my full instructions.txt will be viewable.

For now, since a lot of things might change as I optimize stuff in all the loops, here's an abbreviated run.

Spoiler

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Wow! That's definitely a lot sooner than the number of loops it took me to get Truthseeker in my high score.

I'm also just grinding MOL. I do not have the energy to math out everything to try for leaderboards and then make repeated attempts. Also I want to see if I can find Tanaka 7 days after she gets kidnapped or something. She gets kidnapped to another country by some cult led by an oracle and then suddenly her completely ordinary childhood friend just pops up out of nowhere barely a week later like, "Yo, what's up?" Then straight up goes fist to sword with Paladin the very next day and wrecks a few streets.

This is exactly the kind of stuff I want lmfao. I sooo hope there'd be some unique reactions for situations like these eventually where you're able to do stuff SIGNIFICANTLY sooner than you'd normally be able to.

CSdev Thoughts on this?

I'm pretty sure most of that is going to be handled with either out of order stuff (impressing Jackal before d32), or multiple goals at once(Observing Jackal's Body the first time you train with her).

But that involves a lot of writing so it's probably a ways out, especially since there's still a bunch of placeholder text.

Yes, there are a few places where the Day will significantly alter the scene, but many more cases where the scene differences are determined by the "completing multiple goals at once" system. For example, not needing Tanaka to "rescue" you during your first infiltration into the Syndicate compound, or forcing Paladin to the bargaining table right away. It's actually coming fairly soon (definitely sometime before Release 3).

Finished the main game content as far as I know of it so far. Was somewhere around 45 loops with about 12k MOL, and now on loop 50 gaining almost 1k MOL per loop.

Overall liked the game, the first couple loops were really great, though personally I feel like it got quite difficult to keep motivation around loop 5. I did after loop 10 find out that I could/should have been putting more focus on loops. Got a good breakthrough around that point by redoing things and I think finally understanding how to use academics (or unlocking it, not sure). That went well until I hit another wall around loop 25-30, and thought I just needed to grind out a ton of MOL to progress, as none of the upgrades were helping, until I finally stumbled upon the Impatience perk. After that I quickly started wrapping things up, and though I did a few more grinding sessions then I needed to finish the game (wasn't sure where the end of current content was), overall everything fell into place.

I really like the character dialogues, its really well done for the most part, with some really interesting thought questions behind them. The looping mechanics is a bit awkward, as it quickly goes from powerful feeling, to tedious when you are redoing the entire loop trying to hit enough goals before the time gaps, and some of the perks feel borderline useless compared to the others. Its even more awkward to forgo upgrades because it might break the loop you setup. Not sure exactly how to deal with that though.

I feel like some sort of note or mini-tutorial especially for the looping mechanics would go a long way. I didn't realize there even was a looply setting which would let me grind out points until many hours in, when I was trying to look more into the save mechanics.

The biggest concern though are some semi-bugs with the UI, especially on saving and loading, and the end game screen. The end game screen would be so much better if you just click on a perk to display its stats/info, then click on the upgrade buttons, instead of hovering and tracing my mouse around trying to get to the level down button because I was spamming clicks at the end of the loop and leveled stamina again. Clicking on the same perk again should minimize the info screen/deselect, a different perk switch context, pretty easy to program. Saving and loading is awkward, once you click the button you will be loading a save, the cancel button just doesn't work currently, which is quite annoying.

There were several times when the game froze on me, but quitting and restarting always fixed it.

Anyway, enjoying the story so far, and think I finally understand all the game mechanics, the gameplay is surprisingly deep. I with a few things had been explained better, the most notable being the buff from master your popularity. Its definitely a bit of work to unlock the later game stuff currently, including the intimate scenes, and it would be kinda nice to get some reward for going out of your way to get them, since most of them require a lot of effort (instead of Tanaka's scene breaking the loop automation). Maybe with a few balance tweaks and a little more guidance things will go smoother for new players, some of the power spikes are just insane right now and hard to progress if you don't min max to achieve them. Definitely more about the story instead of the gameplay though.

Now to setup a script and let things run for a couple days to get the powerups to prevent the abduction and a pet goal of mine to get past day 700 something.

Thank you for the feedback! I think part of the UI issue is that I always play with the keyboard shortcuts, so the awkwardness of using the mouse to do things doesn't come across to me as much. I should improve the mouse controls, but I'd also like to find a way to make it clearer to players that the keyboard will let you do everything very easily.

Gonna shelve this for a couple months now. One so that it gets posted for people to see, another for somebody to inevitably beat my score. I'm expecting we'll see a L10 Nemesis run before R3 drops.

There's a lot that can be done to improve it, even in the final loop. I'm pretty sure I forgot to switch diets a few times on that last run.

Something went wrong with the image upload, but congratulations anyway! Remember to send me the currentSave.sav file if you want me to put you in the hall of fame.

Jackal watch out there's a truck flying towards you! (Same bug as before but it's Jackal stuck this time lmao) View attachment 5384222

That poor truck has no idea what's about to happen to it.

Also there's still the issue where pausing auto bugs it for the loop, it'll be off by one day and eventually mess up the whole loop. Pausing auto in a scene does not have this issue

I haven't been able to replicate this issue. Can you tell me exactly what inputs cause this bug to happen?

Is there some kind of wiki for the game? I'm curious to figure out which MOL bonuses to work towards to make the runs easier, and feel like I keep making the same mistakes, especially losing too much time in early game.

There isn't any official wiki, but if someone wants to make a wiki, then I'd be happy to link to it in the game files.