Ecdysis woes

Fallen London
1

I’ve just spent my first 40 actions of the day attempting, and failing, to gain a Dangerous Ecdysis boon. Now, I don’t mind the random aspect as an initial setting, and the use of actions to vary, increase, lower, or keep current Bodily Tendency, but it seems a bit overly difficult at the moment to lower it. I usually don’t have the option to lower it at all, which leaves me relying on the also-random “vary Bodily Tendency” option - and that can be quite frustrating, especially when (as I seem to be) “vary” seems so often to equate to “increase”.

Attempt 1: I begin feeling Malleable (81-100). I use the option to vary BT as much as possible, with successes still all landing in the Malleable range. At Preparing… 4, I can no longer choose to vary my BT (common to all 4 attempts), only to increase or keep constant.

Attempt 2: exactly the same as Attempt 1, more or less.

Attempt 3: I begin feeling Dangerous (21-40)! Yes! I’m given a choice between willing my heart to slow and closing my eyes. Since all starting options (as far as I know) vary tendency randomly, I pick the first… and now I feel Shadowy (41-60). Darn. Still potentially salvageable, though… except that, because I’ve passed the 40+ threshold, no BT-lowering options again show up throughout the run, and I rely on Varying again. I end up at Persuasive.

Attempt 4: I begin feeling Persuasive (61-80). The rest of the run goes as usual, and I end at Persuasive.

While some of this is likely the capriciousness of the Random Number God, I do think Ecdysis would be greatly helped by either changing the thresholds for when the raise/lower actions show up, or simply having them available at all thresholds - I find it a bit bizarre that “raise” is locked to your having a high enough BT, and the opposite for “lower”, which is a bit counterintuitive.

Have other folks been having trouble with shaping themselves? Worth bringing to Support’s attention, or no? (I’m not entirely sure what the etiquette for “this bit of game design feels bad” is re: contacting support vs. posting in the forums.)

1 Like
2

the difficulty in wanted a specific effect seems by design. I have had a similar amount of runs failing to get the shadowy buff.

It is still frustrating, however.

3

I agree, and I don’t necessarily have a problem with that, but in my experience something seems wonky about the weighting - I’d take a Shadowy buff if I got the chance, but Attempt 3 (I’m about to begin 6, now) was the only time I was in the right range for either of the lower-middle options.

Obviously I can’t say for sure since I don’t have access to the code, and this could all be truly random happenstance, but across my entire experience of using Ecdysis, I’ve almost always ended up in the high Malleable range by the end. (Something that seems bizarre from a design perspective given that the advanced stats are, elsewhere in the game, much harder to raise and valued accordingly.)