Bah humbug. I have to wait until I find another skull, the blasted things. Enormously looking forward to the terror!
Also, the God’s Mind was a one time thing? I didn’t see any quality that’d prevent it upon completion, it just takes ages to get the dreams back up.
Ha ha, ouch. I might have stayed a -wee- bit longer than I should have.
I think I’m going to wind up overstaying my welcome too.
I’m still rather hoping for the Revolutionary Firebrand card, but I may be out of luck.
I’ll cross my fingers for you.
Edit: Oh my god, I worry for my stats. There is just so much to see down here! Every time I think I’m ready to leave I draw a new card. I’m a bit worried that when I finally get out of here I’ll get hit with -50 levels to everything. At least it’s all very interesting, though.
edited by Sara Hysaro on 7/6/2013
I left early so I could come back with all the items I didn’t have.
Actually, that wasn’t so bad. Well, I assume that I’ll get more stat drops each week, but I was expecting one big drop. Will definitely be returning at some later date to see if I missed much.
[quote=Erik Vimes]Bah humbug. I have to wait until I find another skull, the blasted things. Enormously looking forward to the terror!
Also, the God’s Mind was a one time thing? I didn’t see any quality that’d prevent it upon completion, it just takes ages to get the dreams back up.[/quote]
It might not be for everyone - in fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not - but when I left, I lost all of my Stormy-Eyed but none of my What The Thunder Said - which was too high to ever draw the card which gives you Stormy-Eyed again, meaning I’m forever banished. I don’t know whether that’s a bug or not, but I bugreported it and got no reply, so I assume it’s… well, Working As Implemented.
Just go to A State of Some Confusion repeatedly and lower your What The Thunder Said quality that way. It’s as easy as jumping through a mirror.
edited by Dolan on 7/6/2013
OH GOD. Just got out of the Cave. I only had one piece of equipment that I could have traded in… and I took the wrong option on that card, and built up nearly 50 Irrigo trying to draw it again. I found some cool stuff along the way, but I have no idea what my allies were looking for in there, and I was so steamed at them when I got out that I don’t think I’ll ever see them again. Alexis, can you tell me - just how long will 47 Irrigo take to fade, and how much damage will I take before I can re-enter? Will it be all at once, or a trading a few points for a few stats each week? Will I regress to a tiny, eye-socket-less baby?
edited by Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook on 7/6/2013
Oh, and half the stuff I tried to echo to my journal didn’t keep, because we can apparently no longer change the titles of journal entries, and titles in quotation marks auto-format to blank for some reason, and echoes with blank titles don’t save for some reason. Which is a bit weird.
[quote=Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook]OH GOD. Just got out of the Cave. I only had one piece of equipment that I could have traded in… and I took the wrong option on that card, and built up nearly 50 Irrigo trying to draw it again. I found some cool stuff along the way, but I have no idea what my allies were looking for in there, and I was so steamed at them when I got out that I don’t think I’ll ever see them again. Alexis, can you tell me - just how long will 47 Irrigo take to fade, and how much damage will I take before I can re-enter? Will it be all at once, or a trading a few points for a few stats each week? Will I regress to a tiny, eye-socket-less baby?
edited by Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook on 7/6/2013[/quote]
[li]
[color=#009900]Yes.[/color]
[color=#009900]You all should have been thrown out of the cave at 10 irrigo: this was a bug I’ve now corrected. So you lucky few who got in early, consider this an extended preview tour, since all your irrigo dissipates at once… The stat damage must hurt, though.[/color][li]
Well ****, now I feel stupid for assuming it would kick you out automatically at 10, and leaving at 9.
God’s tonsil stones - it just kept rising and rising, and as soon as I heard someone report that Irrigo equalled stat loss, I thought “I’m going to end up back at zero, mudlarking for secrets in Ladybones and writing plaintive letters to Surface-aunts.” That makes much more sense.
My stat losses weren’t that bad. Assuming the penalty increases in direct proportion to your Irrigo, you’ll lose around five change points of each primary quality for every point of Irrigo.
Mine got to 31 - so, if that will dissipate in a week if I read the story correctly. Ouch - oh well it could have been worse and the Nadir was definitely worth visiting. I will go back in when I can.
Your calculations seem to stack up, Flyte - I lost four levels per stat. My brain was running wild, thinking "well, maybe I’ll lose 1 Irrigo and 4 levels a week… that’ll set my stats to zero in a little under a year. Maybe it’ll be five Irrigo a week, and I’ll only lose 38 levels across two and a half months!" (I have absolutely no idea why I assumed that new story content would potentially reset our characters without warning, but the Nadir is scary - anything could happen in there.)
edited by Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook on 7/6/2013
[quote=Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook]Oh, and half the stuff I tried to echo to my journal didn’t keep, because we can apparently no longer change the titles of journal entries, and titles in quotation marks auto-format to blank for some reason, and echoes with blank titles don’t save for some reason. Which is a bit weird.[/quote]Yeah, this is very vexing. About the Stormy-Eyed: have you tried giving Dr Schlomo lots of Beetles? His What the Thunder Said card is very rare, but it should do the job eventually.
Alexis, I had 41 Irrigo. The stat damage didn’t hurt. Because we don’t know how much we’ll be penalised while we’re in the cave, there’s a delightful sense of dread, like some fairy tale where we know a child’s doing something very foolish, only now we’re implicated because it turns out that we really can’t resist all that gingerbread…
But precisely because of that period of uncertain, wild-eyed dread, the actual losses feel quite mild, and oddly unthreatening. Did you want me to feel relief when I was hit by those penalties?
Would you consider a) raising the Irrigo cap and b) causing the damage to scale non-linearly with Irrigo? Perhaps, let’s say, parabolically?
As it is, I suspect return players will almost always stay until they’re expelled, which will tend to diminish the delightful conflict I’ve tried to describe.
edited by Flyte on 7/6/2013
Good idea! They’re not common cards, but they’ll turn up eventually…
Having processed things, I think I understand the Nadir’s mechanics now. I thought there was some rare card I had to draw to progress, and I couldn’t figure why I just kept on finding interesting little vignettes, rare treasures, and higher and higher Irrigo. When I chose to leave, I thought the story that popped up was… I dunno, some sort of consolation prize for not finding the next story step, or perhaps a necessary intermission?
That said, I don’t regret my decision to give my fellow spelunkers both barrels. I don’t trust the Missionary half as far as I can throw her - dreadful sort of person. The Firebrand… well, he’s very decorative, but I’m a married man, and even were I not, he’s not really my type. He’s clearly bright and I sympathise with his political opinions, and I’m sure we could remain friends, of a sort… but expeditions like that, I’ll undertake on my own terms, thank you very much.
Anyhow, now that I see the Nadir is something like an arcane pearl-dive - grabbing what we can before bursting back to the surface, lungs burning and brain fogging, to recuperate for another week - I like it a great deal more. It’s still terrifying - I swear I was physically shaking at times! But now I understand what risks I’m taking, and for whose benefit. And I’m still elated with the shaggy little friend I made along the way.