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Cultist SimulatorCritical feedback on recent changes(13 posts)(13 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted November 17, 2018
As someone who has played a lot of the older versions of Cultist Simulator and only recently played the latest version and DLC, I can honestly say that I think the game has sadly gone backwards and instead of improving has actually become considerably worse, less balanced and a less polished experience with time. Reasons why I dont like the recent changes.....

1/ Restlessness spawning is WAY too common. It seems to drop all the time from multiple sources and you end up with long periods of being forced to frantically paint and convert followers CONSTANTLY, over and over again as fast as you possibly can to avoid "dread" overload. Sometimes even that cant keep up with the never-ending "restlessness" flood.

2/ The transient memory (or whatever its called) influence now hangs around for a long time and worse, it can oppose fascination when the madness verb turns up. So you usually have 3, 4 or more of these things just sitting around taking up space and Fascination is now a total joke because it always gets instantly squashed by them. Basically the whole economy of bad thoughts in the game seems totally out of whack where before it was a finely-tuned balancing act. Fascination, formerly the scariest card on the board, can now be effortlessly ignored.

3/ You start off with the Weary Detective - ALWAYS. Boring and predictable and no real reason to ever get rid of him since he's about the easiest anyway. It discourages any risk taking or experimentation with dealing with your hunter to see any of the others. Not a good thing.

4/ Expedition success is now hard-capped at 90%. This means that even if you do everything right, use summons, use the right people who have been painstakingly upgraded, you still have a very significant chance of screwing up somewhere along the line of challenges (so if you have 4 challenges - each at 90% success - on an expedition, then that's a 33% chance of screwing up somewhere along the line), and if that point happens to be a curse then you can say bye bye to a follower or permanent stat (which are now capped themselves) due to NOTHING that you did wrong. To mitigate this, AK has introduced wounds to cultists and curses can be taken out by high level heart influences (10+) but they are so rare and inconsistently hard to get that you're essentially still screwed. Its not good to have a challenge that results in a decent chance of failure no matter what you do or how you prepare. Its just not good game design.

5/ The romance mechanic is incredibly non-intuitive. I wouldn't even have known it existed if it wasn't for the new rose verb continually popping up and giving me free contentment every so often without offering the faintest clue to its existence or how to progress further with it. I waited ages for one of my loyal cultists to ask their boss out on a date as an ambitious ladder-climbing move if nothing else, but...... nothing. I had to go onto the net to figure out that the only way to start a relationship is via me starting it in a convoluted way that I would never have thought of. Even then I got flatly rejected by 3 different cultists in a row for something I couldn't change or do anything about, so I never actually managed to get a single relationship going. Bottom line, I have no real interest in exploring this any further to see if there's any gold hidden among the large amounts of crap you have to wade through. Romantic rejection is bad enough in RL without it being faithfully simulated in a game that's supposed to be fun.

6/ I have zero interest at all in being a dancer, so the dancer dlc is a total wash, but I realize that's just personal taste and not a problem with the design. It would be nice to see some similarly in-depth legacies which might appeal to more people's tastes though, especially if you have to pay for them.

Things I liked about the most recent changes.....

1/ The cap on stats *did* make the game a little harder, albeit in a rather annoyingly draconian and heavy-handed way. It created its own problems too but the way it increases difficulty and makes you think more carefully about where to put your skills is at least one good thing.

2/ The lessons learned mechanic is...... ok. It does the job in a kind of meh way. Not very inspired tbh, but it works.

3/ High level influences dont just vanish when they time out, they degrade to lower versions first, time out again, degrade, time out, and only vanish (or change to something bad) when they reach 2. A good change done in an interesting way with no real downsides.

Hope this feedback is of use to someone, personally I will be going back to play an older version of the game which doesn't have the above problems and with any luck these pretty serious balance problems will eventually be ironed out.
Posted December 06, 2018
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Lucian667: As someone who has played a lot of the older versions of Cultist Simulator and only recently played the latest version and DLC, I can honestly say that I think the game has sadly gone backwards and instead of improving has actually become considerably worse, less balanced and a less polished experience with time. Reasons why I dont like the recent changes.....

1/ Restlessness spawning is WAY too common. It seems to drop all the time from multiple sources and you end up with long periods of being forced to frantically paint and convert followers CONSTANTLY, over and over again as fast as you possibly can to avoid "dread" overload. Sometimes even that cant keep up with the never-ending "restlessness" flood.

2/ The transient memory (or whatever its called) influence now hangs around for a long time and worse, it can oppose fascination when the madness verb turns up. So you usually have 3, 4 or more of these things just sitting around taking up space and Fascination is now a total joke because it always gets instantly squashed by them. Basically the whole economy of bad thoughts in the game seems totally out of whack where before it was a finely-tuned balancing act. Fascination, formerly the scariest card on the board, can now be effortlessly ignored.

3/ You start off with the Weary Detective - ALWAYS. Boring and predictable and no real reason to ever get rid of him since he's about the easiest anyway. It discourages any risk taking or experimentation with dealing with your hunter to see any of the others. Not a good thing.

4/ Expedition success is now hard-capped at 90%. This means that even if you do everything right, use summons, use the right people who have been painstakingly upgraded, you still have a very significant chance of screwing up somewhere along the line of challenges (so if you have 4 challenges - each at 90% success - on an expedition, then that's a 33% chance of screwing up somewhere along the line), and if that point happens to be a curse then you can say bye bye to a follower or permanent stat (which are now capped themselves) due to NOTHING that you did wrong. To mitigate this, AK has introduced wounds to cultists and curses can be taken out by high level heart influences (10+) but they are so rare and inconsistently hard to get that you're essentially still screwed. Its not good to have a challenge that results in a decent chance of failure no matter what you do or how you prepare. Its just not good game design.

5/ The romance mechanic is incredibly non-intuitive. I wouldn't even have known it existed if it wasn't for the new rose verb continually popping up and giving me free contentment every so often without offering the faintest clue to its existence or how to progress further with it. I waited ages for one of my loyal cultists to ask their boss out on a date as an ambitious ladder-climbing move if nothing else, but...... nothing. I had to go onto the net to figure out that the only way to start a relationship is via me starting it in a convoluted way that I would never have thought of. Even then I got flatly rejected by 3 different cultists in a row for something I couldn't change or do anything about, so I never actually managed to get a single relationship going. Bottom line, I have no real interest in exploring this any further to see if there's any gold hidden among the large amounts of crap you have to wade through. Romantic rejection is bad enough in RL without it being faithfully simulated in a game that's supposed to be fun.

6/ I have zero interest at all in being a dancer, so the dancer dlc is a total wash, but I realize that's just personal taste and not a problem with the design. It would be nice to see some similarly in-depth legacies which might appeal to more people's tastes though, especially if you have to pay for them.

Things I liked about the most recent changes.....

1/ The cap on stats *did* make the game a little harder, albeit in a rather annoyingly draconian and heavy-handed way. It created its own problems too but the way it increases difficulty and makes you think more carefully about where to put your skills is at least one good thing.

2/ The lessons learned mechanic is...... ok. It does the job in a kind of meh way. Not very inspired tbh, but it works.

3/ High level influences dont just vanish when they time out, they degrade to lower versions first, time out again, degrade, time out, and only vanish (or change to something bad) when they reach 2. A good change done in an interesting way with no real downsides.

Hope this feedback is of use to someone, personally I will be going back to play an older version of the game which doesn't have the above problems and with any luck these pretty serious balance problems will eventually be ironed out.
I agree with many of your problems, but only a little. I think the game is much improved overall. You no longer feel like you are governed entirely by RNG, especially with follower deaths. If a follower dies on an expedition, it is because YOU sent them out with two scars of the same kind.

Restlessness is ridiculously common because of the Ambition verb spawning it, but Contentment is easy to get if you are paying attention and planning ahead. A job at the Ecdysis Club can wipe any influence (including Restlessness, Dread, or Fascination) for free, though you shouldn't go out of your way to get it because of the health impact.

Fleeting Reminiscences are annoying and useless, as far as I can tell. I don't think they're what make Fascination a joke, though: Fascination is a joke because it is spectacularly rare unless you visit the Ecdysis Club or Streets Strange in Moonlight. Avoid the latter in particular, and it barely ever shows up. It certainly never shows up en masse like Dread can. Both Dread and Fascination have always been fairly easy to manage if you are proactive about it: that's the game. If you only start paying attention once you are one card away from death, you deserve what's coming to you.

I have no evidence that the Weary Detective is guaranteed to spawn first. I've had it happen a lot recently, but it's probably just dumb luck. That being said, the game would probably be improved by taking him out of the deck entirely, so he only shows up when you... take care... of all the named Hunters.

I feel mixed about the Expedition change. On the one hand, it makes sense that Expeditions should always carry risk. As a player, though, I really wish it was possible for them not to. Especially with curses, which are virtually impossible to counteract. I see two alternative design choices here:

Raise the 90% chance to 99% or something, which substantially reduces the cumulative chance of failure for larger vaults.
Add a final skill check that is impossible for a single expedition member to ever satisfy (like 20), that succeeds 100% of the time. Expeditions have a LOT of opportunities to add members, and I find most of them are entirely useless at the moment. Hitting 10 for every check is quite easy if you've taken care of your followers.

Romance is really unintuitive, even for this game. I blame the lack of hints: if the Romance verb said "[Talk to a Follower about your Ambition to pursue a relationship]" or something when it found no one, that would be much better. You shouldn't expect everyone to love you, though. This game is called Cultist Simulator: everyone already has their obsessions, and they won't just change to match yours.

I absolutely love all the other changes, though. Stat-boosting is much more practical and methodical with the Lessons Learned system (Vitality feels a bit grindy without any skillbooks, but that is probably just because I like to max it out).

Influences always felt a bit irrelevant to me, since they seemed impossible to plan around with such a short timer. I recently learned that you can actually upgrade them like lore, though. I haven't had an opportunity to try that yet, but it might make them more impactful. It might even make all those curses that trigger on a 10% chance feel less unfair.
Posted January 02, 2019
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Lucian667: 1/ Restlessness spawning is WAY too common. It seems to drop all the time from multiple sources and you end up with long periods of being forced to frantically paint and convert followers CONSTANTLY, over and over again as fast as you possibly can to avoid "dread" overload. Sometimes even that cant keep up with the never-ending "restlessness" flood.
Restlessness is only really an issue if you're relying on one of the timed jobs for income, if you have other decent sources of income (like painting, commissions or started as the Physician) it's not an issue at all
2/ The transient memory (or whatever its called) influence now hangs around for a long time and worse, it can oppose fascination when the madness verb turns up. So you usually have 3, 4 or more of these things just sitting around taking up space and Fascination is now a total joke because it always gets instantly squashed by them. Basically the whole economy of bad thoughts in the game seems totally out of whack where before it was a finely-tuned balancing act. Fascination, formerly the scariest card on the board, can now be effortlessly ignored.
"Taking up space" really isn't a thing unless you refuse to zoom out and/or scroll around. Also Fleeteing Remniscience has no downside when it decays, so just shove it off to the side if it bothers you.

Like with Restlessness and Dread, certain actions have a higher chance of spawning this Influence (Dreaming on Dread with Contentment seems to be a fairly safe bet), so if it really bothers you that much try changing your tactics.
3/ You start off with the Weary Detective - ALWAYS. Boring and predictable and no real reason to ever get rid of him since he's about the easiest anyway. It discourages any risk taking or experimentation with dealing with your hunter to see any of the others. Not a good thing.
I don't mind starting with the Weary Detective, but it would be nice if he could gain a single bonus trait after collecting evidence several times. Only for the Weary Detective though, as he is really no danger at all if you're on top of either Notoriety or Tentative Evidence.
Posted April 20, 2019
Just thought I'd update this post to reflect my current feelings on the game. I just finished an enlightenment victory on the latest version and I have to say that AK has managed to improve gameplay considerably from where it was a few months ago. Just going over my original points from the OP......

1/ Restlessness / Dread still drops pretty often but seems to have been reduced to the point that it feels more like a beatable challenge than a game-destroying bug. I honestly cant put my finger on exactly what has been changed to fix this but it definitely feels much better.

2/ Fascination is still nowhere near as scary as it was in older versions, but the timer on 'Fleeting Reminiscences' has been considerably lowered so that you cant always be 100% certain of having 3 or 4 of them permanently lying around just waiting to squash any Fascination that appears. Also more cards now degrade to fascination which greatly improves the challenge of dealing with it. I wouldn't say that Fascination has gotten to the point where dealing with it is actually challenging in any sense, but its definitely a vast improvement over recent versions where it could just be completely ignored. I think it could be pretty easily made even more challenging again by further lowering the timer on Fleeting Reminiscences.

3/ Sadly the game is still hard coded to start you off with the 'Weary Detective' which gives you zero incentive to ever get rid of him or see any of the other detectives the game offers. If you started off with a random detective and were forced to get rid of them one by one until you drew the Weary Detective then I think the whole hunter thing would be 100% more fun and you would actually have an incentive to risk dealing with them. Basically nothing has changed here and its a shame. A game mechanic which encourages you to never see certain game content is IMO, not good game design.

4/ Expedition success is unfortunately still hard-capped at 90%, resulting in unfair RNG failures even when you do everything right. But Its no longer an issue for me because I created a mod for myself which kept all the old odds but added 100% success chance when you have a relevant stat of 15 or greater. So the 90% success rate is still there with lower stats but if you have overwhelming power then you can 100% succeed. I would have hoped for the problem to be officially fixed but I guess AK deserves kudos for making it so easy to mod out these problems. Its great to have some sort of solution when you strongly feel that games should not be designed to randomly punish the player for doing nothing wrong.

5/ I'm now pretty familiar with the romance mechanic and I'm kind of meh about it. It works all right but seems kind of bare-bones. But anyway I no longer really consider it a negative game issue but it would be nice to see it expanded upon in the future.

I summary, I think the game has improved substantially over the past few months and I no longer feel the need to play very old versions to feel like I'm not playing a fundamentally broken game. The latest version of the game now works pretty well, is reasonably balanced and is loads of fun. In addition, the many good changes and quality of life improvements I mentioned in the OP are very welcome. I think Alexis really deserves a lot of credit for recognizing, identifying and either partially or fully addressing many of the above problems. Well done.
Posted April 25, 2019
I agree with most of what you wrote recently, except 4. When expeditions were guaranteed 100% success, the game was far too easy and predictable - now there's a chance of something going wrong and having to adapt.

Seriously, the 10% chance when shit hits the fan isn't in any way difficult to manage, even if you do a ton of expeditions and get hit with multiple curses (I lost reason (or passion?) twice I think, still managed to win easily enough).

I like it when my cultists get injured, since they get wounds and wounds == power. It's one of the few ways to gain a stat.


Totally agree about the detective though - I have no idea why it was changed so that we always start with him. Maybe because of rivals, since they can kill him? But unless you're starting as the inspector, you have to actually go out of your way to create rivals.

Speaking of which, the way rivals are handled (via having to create a "trap" to use on a vault, which almost always times out before then) is kind of crap. It's an unneccesary mechanic that's only used for rivals, and while it does slightly change the aspect thresholds for quality, it's annoying to have to use up the talk verb just for this. It would be a lot cooler if we had the option of sending some minions (cultists and/or summons) after them when they go on their expedition - and even better if there's a chance of getting some/all of the expedition loot if you successfully foil it.

The latest research mechanics (available in the beta) are pretty awesome - I recommend trying the beta just for that. It's much better than the old one, and there's finally a use for some of those top-end skills (apart from the health ones).
Posted April 27, 2019
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squid830: I agree with most of what you wrote recently, except 4. When expeditions were guaranteed 100% success, the game was far too easy and predictable - now there's a chance of something going wrong and having to adapt.

Seriously, the 10% chance when shit hits the fan isn't in any way difficult to manage, even if you do a ton of expeditions and get hit with multiple curses (I lost reason (or passion?) twice I think, still managed to win easily enough).
Despite what I wrote, I do agree with your above philosophy to some extent. But where we part company is when the expedition has absolutely overwhelming power (stats of 15 or even 20) and should really be able to sweep any opposition aside like it wasn't even there. RNG Failing under those circumstances, when you have literal demigods on your side just seems silly.

Fortunately thanks to the ease of modding, we both get what we want, I've still kept the 10% chance of failure with 10 to 14 skill, I've just added 0% chance of failure when you have overwhelming power (15 or greater) and I'm more than happy with the result.

I'd love to mod out always getting the weary detective first too, but I really dont know where to look, for all I know it might be hard-coded and impossible to change. I haven't really looked very hard though so there's always the possibility that it might be a pretty simple fix. If I figure out how to do it, I'll post it here.
Posted April 27, 2019
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squid830: I agree with most of what you wrote recently, except 4. When expeditions were guaranteed 100% success, the game was far too easy and predictable - now there's a chance of something going wrong and having to adapt.

Seriously, the 10% chance when shit hits the fan isn't in any way difficult to manage, even if you do a ton of expeditions and get hit with multiple curses (I lost reason (or passion?) twice I think, still managed to win easily enough).
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Lucian667: Despite what I wrote, I do agree with your above philosophy to some extent. But where we part company is when the expedition has absolutely overwhelming power (stats of 15 or even 20) and should really be able to sweep any opposition aside like it wasn't even there. RNG Failing under those circumstances, when you have literal demigods on your side just seems silly.

Fortunately thanks to the ease of modding, we both get what we want, I've still kept the 10% chance of failure with 10 to 14 skill, I've just added 0% chance of failure when you have overwhelming power (15 or greater) and I'm more than happy with the result.

I'd love to mod out always getting the weary detective first too, but I really dont know where to look, for all I know it might be hard-coded and impossible to change. I haven't really looked very hard though so there's always the possibility that it might be a pretty simple fix. If I figure out how to do it, I'll post it here.
I can probably help you with the detective, since I've done it myself. It's actually pretty simple:

- Open the file core\recipes\hunting.json.
- Edit the recipe with id "suspicioncreatefirsthunter" to make it more like the "suspicioncreatehunter" recipe:
- Remove the "defaulthunter:1" bit from the "effects" section, so it becomes:
effects: {reputation:-1}
- Add a line directly underneath (or above) the "effects" line which reads:
deckeffect: {"hunters":1},

And that's all there is to it - if you do it right (e.g. don't forget things like the comma at the end of the line etc.), that should ensure that hunters are randomly selected from the deck every time, even the first time.

There's still a 1 in 5 chance of getting the weary detective any time a hunter is drawn, and once you run out of the "unique" investigators you'll still get him all the time (since the list doesn't refresh). Which is basically the way it was many patches ago.

The list of hunters is in core\decks\contacts.json, in case you wanted to go nuts and add new ones or make the list refresh or something. Not something I've bothered doing since I rarely kill that many hunters in a single game anyway, but if you do and get bored of a constant stream of weary detectives after list exhaustion, it might be worth looking into.
Posted April 27, 2019
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squid830: I agree with most of what you wrote recently, except 4. When expeditions were guaranteed 100% success, the game was far too easy and predictable - now there's a chance of something going wrong and having to adapt.

Seriously, the 10% chance when shit hits the fan isn't in any way difficult to manage, even if you do a ton of expeditions and get hit with multiple curses (I lost reason (or passion?) twice I think, still managed to win easily enough).
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Lucian667: But where we part company is when the expedition has absolutely overwhelming power (stats of 15 or even 20) and should really be able to sweep any opposition aside like it wasn't even there. RNG Failing under those circumstances, when you have literal demigods on your side just seems silly.
I kind of agree with you, somewhat, with what you're saying. I'd still like a possibility of failure no matter the level, but I have been thinking about adding more "levels" of effect, so that there's a difference between having 10 and having 15 (or more) of an aspect in an expedition. Sort of what you did, except instead of making the top one 100% I'd make it 95% or something (figuring that there'd be diminishing returns the more of an aspect you'd put in, but it would still potentially make a difference).

Either that or possibly adjust all the other values as well, so instead of having the percentages be 30/70/90, maybe add one and adjust so they become 30/50/70/90 or similar - with the aspect values required being 3/5/10/15 (for extra challenge) or 3/5/7/10 (about the same challenge, but the 7 aspect level adds more variety, and allows for potentially more use from gifts and/or wounds). Or maybe a combination of both.

Or (or additionally), it would make perfect sense for the higher-level vaults to have tougher obstacles, as opposed to the way it is now where every single obstacle is exactly the same effective difficulty. That would make rushing for the higher-tier vaults more perilous, as opposed to simply more time-consuming due to the top level vaults having one or two more obstacles than the lower levels.

So far I've generally only messed with stuff that's possibly broken (the new research in the beta - I've "fixed" it based on how I think it's supposed to work, so that any lore that's subverted/upgraded isn't already pre-researched, since that makes research way too easy).

I've also re-enabled summons with the "deceiver" trait to be able to potentially drive your cultists insane (it should attempt this roughly 50% of the time - the other 50% it will attempt to destroy reason as usual). I haven't tested this properly yet though, so can't say how well (or otherwise) this works. It should in theory use the "derangemortal" transformation to "derange" whatever follower it finds, if its successful.
Post edited April 27, 2019 by squid830
Posted April 27, 2019
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squid830: Or (or additionally), it would make perfect sense for the higher-level vaults to have tougher obstacles, as opposed to the way it is now where every single obstacle is exactly the same effective difficulty. That would make rushing for the higher-tier vaults more perilous, as opposed to simply more time-consuming due to the top level vaults having one or two more obstacles than the lower levels.
This would be my preferred twist, with lower level vaults having a cap of 95/100% chance of success on their tasks while higher level vaults having a 90% cap (and more stats required to get that). From what I recall, that would require making multiple versions of each encounter type that is shared across vaults of different tiers.
Posted April 27, 2019
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squid830: I can probably help you with the detective, since I've done it myself. It's actually pretty simple:

- Open the file core\recipes\hunting.json.
- Edit the recipe with id "suspicioncreatefirsthunter" to make it more like the "suspicioncreatehunter" recipe:
- Remove the "defaulthunter:1" bit from the "effects" section, so it becomes:
effects: {reputation:-1}
- Add a line directly underneath (or above) the "effects" line which reads:
deckeffect: {"hunters":1},

And that's all there is to it - if you do it right (e.g. don't forget things like the comma at the end of the line etc.), that should ensure that hunters are randomly selected from the deck every time, even the first time.

There's still a 1 in 5 chance of getting the weary detective any time a hunter is drawn, and once you run out of the "unique" investigators you'll still get him all the time (since the list doesn't refresh). Which is basically the way it was many patches ago.
Many thanks, that was dead easy and I've already made the changes. No problem with the 1/5 chance, I dont mind drawing him randomly, but always having him show up first strongly encourages me to game the system and never get rid of him which is IMO really not how the game is supposed to be played (or how I want to play it anyway).

The idea that the Weary Detective will eventually show up if you get rid of enough of the tougher hunters encourages risk-taking and is a goal worth working towards.

I'm really loving how easy the author has made this game to mod, it has turned what I would consider a couple of pretty serious gripes - which will probably never be officially fixed because they stem from a fundamental difference in game design philosophy - to what I now consider a damn near perfect game.

Thanks again for the fix.
Posted April 27, 2019
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squid830: Or (or additionally), it would make perfect sense for the higher-level vaults to have tougher obstacles, as opposed to the way it is now where every single obstacle is exactly the same effective difficulty. That would make rushing for the higher-tier vaults more perilous, as opposed to simply more time-consuming due to the top level vaults having one or two more obstacles than the lower levels.
I really like this idea and I'd be fully on board for some type of "obstacle difficulty" to adjust the odds on the fly so that what was formerly considered "overwhelming power" and 100% chance for lower level obstacles now only gives you 90% chance. Or less depending on the difficulty.

I wonder if it would be possible to simulate this by subtracting a "difficulty value" from your effective stat to make it a lower value ONLY for the purposes of the specific obstacle? I dont really know enough about the .json format to know if that's possible but if it is then new and more difficult challenges could pretty easily be written.

Ideally the difficulty would have to be clearly conveyed to the player in some fashion so that informed strategic decisions and reasonably accurate risk assessment can be weighed up beforehand.

Perhaps something like your idea will be implemented in the future, it would certainly add interesting depth and challenge to the exploration system.
Posted April 27, 2019
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squid830: I can probably help you with the detective, since I've done it myself. It's actually pretty simple:

- Open the file core\recipes\hunting.json.
- Edit the recipe with id "suspicioncreatefirsthunter" to make it more like the "suspicioncreatehunter" recipe:
- Remove the "defaulthunter:1" bit from the "effects" section, so it becomes:
effects: {reputation:-1}
- Add a line directly underneath (or above) the "effects" line which reads:
deckeffect: {"hunters":1},

And that's all there is to it - if you do it right (e.g. don't forget things like the comma at the end of the line etc.), that should ensure that hunters are randomly selected from the deck every time, even the first time.

There's still a 1 in 5 chance of getting the weary detective any time a hunter is drawn, and once you run out of the "unique" investigators you'll still get him all the time (since the list doesn't refresh). Which is basically the way it was many patches ago.
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Lucian667: Many thanks, that was dead easy and I've already made the changes. No problem with the 1/5 chance, I dont mind drawing him randomly, but always having him show up first strongly encourages me to game the system and never get rid of him which is IMO really not how the game is supposed to be played (or how I want to play it anyway).

The idea that the Weary Detective will eventually show up if you get rid of enough of the tougher hunters encourages risk-taking and is a goal worth working towards.

I'm really loving how easy the author has made this game to mod, it has turned what I would consider a couple of pretty serious gripes - which will probably never be officially fixed because they stem from a fundamental difference in game design philosophy - to what I now consider a damn near perfect game.

Thanks again for the fix.
No probs.

Definitely agree on the modability of this game. It's strange that there are no actual mods out yet for it AFAIK, apart from this one total conversion mod that someone released (which effectively makes it a totally different game altogether).

I've also toyed with the idea of making the expedition rewards more random again - not as crazy-random as they used to be (with the old common/uncommon/rare tables - that was TOO random for my liking), but just using the current expedition tables (there's now a table for each "tier") which is what the "default" expeditions all use. I reverted back again though because that was still too random - I might instead just make it so that the "sets" of rewards are the same, just the specific expedition you can find each "set" on is randomised.

My main gripe with the way it is currently is that once you know which expeditions have what stuff, you can use that meta-knowledge to specifically target certain vaults - IMO there should be at least a little bit of chance involved in what you get. Of course the problem with the randomisation before was that it was so random that grinding expeditions was a thing (which at least the current system avoids, for the most part).
Posted April 27, 2019
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squid830: Or (or additionally), it would make perfect sense for the higher-level vaults to have tougher obstacles, as opposed to the way it is now where every single obstacle is exactly the same effective difficulty. That would make rushing for the higher-tier vaults more perilous, as opposed to simply more time-consuming due to the top level vaults having one or two more obstacles than the lower levels.
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WingedKagouti: This would be my preferred twist, with lower level vaults having a cap of 95/100% chance of success on their tasks while higher level vaults having a 90% cap (and more stats required to get that). From what I recall, that would require making multiple versions of each encounter type that is shared across vaults of different tiers.
You're right, it would require at the very least additional "recipes" to account for the different "levels" of threat, and then the vault recipes would need to be modified to use them. Easiest way would be copy/paste the existing ones and edit them slightly, e.g. take a "seal_hiddendoor_encounter" and make a "seal_hiddendoor2_encounter", tack that to the end of explore_obstacles_seals.json.

You'd also need to create the elements as well in vault_locks.json, e.g. "seal_hiddendoor", then add it to the higher-level expeditions that should have it (e.g. "explore_vaults_eveningisles.json").

Of course there are "sub-recipes" for each of these - one for each combination of aspect type and level you'd want where the effects differ (which would also have to be copied and renamed), plus one sub-recipe for failure and one for success. Currently, each "seal_hiddendoor" has six sub-recipes plus the two failure/success ones.

It's possible I'm missing a step in there somewhere, but that's should be the bulk of it.

If you're really adventurous you can stick the "obstacles" in a new "deck", and have each vault draw a number of obstacles from a deck - thereby making the obstacles random for each expedition. Though in that case you'd have to ensure the vault description updates properly, or else you'll be unpleasantly surprised.
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