I believe that returning from the Nadir also refills your hand.
I didn’t interpret it as a bug, but I’ve noticed that you always begin a heist with twice as many cards as you had in London. Then returning to London seems to mostly or entirely fill your deck.
I don’t know if it’s a bug or a feature with the “Make Your Move” cards.
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I had both in my hand and clicked on one (can’t remember which) to gain Up Your Sleeve, but once the action was over, the other disappeared.
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I later had both in my hand again, and intended to test if both cards get consumed again. But when I perhaps notted out of “The Time Draws Near” card, which has an extra 0 action choice, the card disappeared. I guess this answers James Sinclair’s question - you can lose the card.
As far as I can tell, pretty much all these areas now double the number of cards in your deck. So if you have zero cards waiting to be drawn, you still have zero, but if you have one, you get two. Two gets four, etc. (Up to your deck limit, six or ten for EF.)
This counts for both going into these areas and coming back to London.
I hope this is intended behavior because it really is quite fantastic.
Well. I was on one of those Automatic Self-launching Obstacle Cards™ (“a true miracle of clockwork technology”, according to Popular Mechanics), and my chances for turning it into an Opening being less than encouraging, I decided to try out that trick with the second chance where you back out before the second action. Normally one loses a card that way (which is exactly what happened the first time I had tried that trick, with an Unsigned Message no less), but these cards cannot be discarded, so I thought it would be interesting either way.
The funny thing happened after I clicked on “Perhaps not” and was taken back to the card, only this time the branch I had chosen was the only one visible, and the option to use a second chance was no longer available. All I could do was repeat the action (and lose). I don’t mind the intention behind this, having no trouble with the idea that second chances could be just that (and being unaware of the trick until fairly recently), but one does wonder whether it might not be easier to just remove the “Perhaps not” in those cases (and one guesses it would be unexpectedly and excruciatingly hard for some obscure reason).
[quote=navchaa]1. I had both in my hand and clicked on one (can’t remember which) to gain Up Your Sleeve, but once the action was over, the other disappeared.
[/quote]
Had a very frustrating first run where the same thing happened to me, whilst I was at 95 progress. I immediately hit 100+ progress immediately after, but after a very long string of menaces and more progress cards, it eventually kicked me out for having my scandal too high, at about 130 progress >.> I’m sat back in London now with 40 less actions and nothing to show for it but a bunch of menaces! At a guess, this bug(?) happens because the 0 action choice links to the other card. I assume that the game doesn’t think of it as a specific card, but as a storylet in general, so by taking an action, it clears your hand of the storylet, which is now both cards. Similarly, you’re not meant to be able to have two of the same card in your hand, which is probably why it disappears with the perhaps not. This doesn’t really have the chance to happen in London (maybe if you choose an option on An Implausible Penance and then perhaps not, and then pick the same option the next time you draw the card?).
So yeah, little bit annoyed, but my thoughts generally echo everyone else’s. Seems like a really interesting concept, but the sheer number of actions required seems too high. Would like to be able to leave as soon as I hit 100 progress. Little bit disappointed with the Steadfast cards spending the quirk and lacking any other reasonable option - people with 12+ Steadfast clearly have a trustworthy relationship to call upon, but don’t want to be spending it (though I recognise that the game isn’t designed around keeping high quirks, so I suppose this is just a personal gripe).
Hope to see some refinements, because I can see it being content I play regularly if it isn’t so frustrating.
EDIT: After getting that off my chest, I decided to start another attempt. I can confirm that using the card without the 0 action choice allows you to keep the other one. Sadly, this run looks like it’s going to go the same way as the first, with my scandal already very high at only 50 progress. I do find the menace balancing interesting, but I wish the penalty for failure wasn’t quite so harsh.
edited by Infrasound on 12/18/2015
[quote=navchaa]I don’t know if it’s a bug or a feature with the "Make Your Move" cards.
- I had both in my hand and clicked on one (can’t remember which) to gain Up Your Sleeve, but once the action was over, the other disappeared.[/quote]
As far as I can tell, "Make your Move: the Time Draws Near" exists only to redirect to "Make your Move: a Confessional Evening". I guess the former is intended to function as a second card that does the same thing as the latter but appears in different circumstances (i.e. when progress is higher). However, both times I have started a Flash Lay, I found "A Confessional Evening" in the very first hand I was dealt and simply kept it, so "The Time Draws Near" was entirely useless to me; I’d discard it if I could, but using the redirect costs no actions and still does away with the card so I cannot really complain about filling my deck with cards I don’t want. I don’t know what happens if one uses "The Time Draws Near" without having "A Confessional Evening", but I guess it still redirects you to it all the same, as with Acquaintances cards. It wouldn’t make much sense if it didn’t.
I wonder how the situation could be improved. Could "The Time Draws Near" be changed so that it doesn’t appear when "A Confessional Evening" is in one’s hand? I can’t really say I’ve seen cards behave like that; it’s only duplicates of the same card that don’t appear in the same hand, and cards are otherwise locked and unlocked by some external quality. I haven’t had to deal with twin cards before. On the other hand (no pun intended), perhaps a way could be found that makes players more confident of finding a "Make your Move" card when they are more likely to need it and less likely to hold on to it as I have. Then "The Time Draws Near" wouldn’t be so jarring, and I wouldn’t have a hand of two cards in practical terms.
But there’s another thing. I don’t want to have a large hand, not with Obstacles popping up all the time. As long as I haven’t removed or altered them, I tend to draw cards at a trickle, only one a time. Perhaps once my deck is Obstacle-free I’ll want a bigger hand, but until then I don’t understand why anyone (whose stats are not way above requirements, at least) would complain about not having a four-card hand, and thus much higher chances of getting two Obstacle cards in quick succession.
I haven’t seen any options on that card other than the redirect.
EDIT: I wrote the above without having read the preceding post, though I cannot say I understood that explanation very well. Regarding the quirks, in the Spirifer run I opted for the choice that didn’t spend Steadfast, but I didn’t have the stats to do that in the Auditor one. Steadfast is one of my main qualities, so I really don’t like spending it, even though I’m only at level 10.
POST FURTHER EDITED for some misuse of terminology.
edited by The Duke of Waltham on 12/18/2015
Sorry - what I had meant is that “The Time Draws Near” card has a 0 action redirect. If you take the redirect, a Perhaps Not will cause you to lose the card.
My apologies, my brain’s a bit scattered at the moment with exams, and I hadn’t been up for very long when I posted that. Let me give it another shot.
If you have the two cards in hand, there are five options:
- Perhaps Not on A Confessional Evening does nothing.[/li][li]Immediately using Perhaps Not on Time Draws Near does nothing.[/li][li]Using the redirect on Time Draws Near, then using Perhaps Not leaves you with just one card, A Confessional Evening (as the Duke and naavcha both say).[/li][li]Using the redirect on Time Draws Near, then playing the Up Your Sleeve option uses up both cards (as navchaa explained originally, and I experienced on my first playthrough).[/li][li]Playing the Up Your Sleeve option on A Confessional Evening without touching Time Draws Near leaves you with the Time Draws Near card.
If you don’t have A Confessional Evening, and you use the redirect on Time Draws Near then Perhaps Not, you left with A Confessional Evening.
As for an explanation, a recent(ish) patch made it so most cards with redirects leave you with the card you redirected to. This is good for cards that loop to themselves like Slowcake’s Amanuensis as you can Perhaps Not without losing them, as well as other cards with redirects such as An Implausible Penance. You can never have two of the same card, so if you would have two, it removes one copy of it. So, if you have both A Confessional Evening and Time Draws Near, and play the redirect on Time Draws Near, you now have two copies of A Confessional Evening. The game notices this and removes one of them (though this isn’t obvious if you don’t Perhaps Not). That means that when you then go on to use the Up Your Sleeve option, you use up your last card.
Well, THAT was frustrating.
Hadn’t read the forum for the last 12 hours, so did not see that coming.
Had 98 progress, after 24 actions, 6 second chances, and menaces that are here to stay - I had FAILED the Lay. Did you know one can fail at this?
Very frustrating, not knowing that could happen. Not knowing one should keep menaces under a certain value (under 5 scandal at the harder Flash Lay).
The flit heists have instructions and one knows to keep his Cat value at one or above. But on Flash Lay, letting the player find out on his own that he can fail, after a loss of so many actions, is not good experience…
Perhaps I missed the warning at the beginning? Was there? If so - my full responsibility! But if not, that just leaves a bad taste…
It feels like, well… a trap. So many actions lost when the rules are hidden.
I’m in a mentality right now of "cutting my loses" and avoiding investment in more actions in the Flash Lay. Which is a shame. I know you really put time and effort on this content. Even when I now know this menace restriction, and can play to avoid it, I rather just continue elsewhere to invest my actions. Silly, and psychological, I know. But that disappointment is real and could, maybe, keep others from playing this content when losing a Flash without proper warning after investing actions and second chances.
Hope I have explained myself. Thank you for the new content, even so.
ADDITION: Would really like to know if I was careless by not reading the instructions on beginning of the Lay. Knowing that I just missed it could lighten that frustration.
edited by Gonen on 12/18/2015
Are you lot stalking my character? Flash Lay is the perfect set of challenges for them, and the sort of stuff they do for fun!
I do agree that the challenges for the second one seem a little heavy, but in honesty, I love both of the stories already and I hope more Flash Lays (Flashes Lay?) get added! Thanks Failbetter!
Well, that was fun. My second Flash Lay (and first try at the Auditor) ended unceremoniously at around 80 progress owing to high Scandal. Had I known that before, I’d have tried harder to reduce my menaces before I impatiently started it; as it was, I entered with Scandal close to 3 because that was the lowest I could take it by going to church.
I recall there were no instructions about menaces at the beginning, or indeed any kind of instructions at all; even the note about the level of progress one must reach was added later, at the request of players posting here. This is experimental content and therefore we are its testers:
I recall there were no instructions about menaces at the beginning, or indeed any kind of instructions at all; even the note about the level of progress one must reach was added later, at the request of players posting here. This is experimental content and therefore we are its testers:
Yes, I understood that they wanted us to explore on our own. Though when investing in so many actions, 2nd chances and later on, cleaning high menaces… Well, I’m having a hard time accepting the punish of such an investment just because one needs to find the rules on one’s own. Even the shorter Heist instructs on the failure option. 5 scandal was not a big deal until now, so never had I suspected that achieving "merely" 5 scandal can kick me out.
Imagine the other 90% of players who don’t read the forum and finds out the hard way.
Also: Sorry, I hope i’m not triggering "admins alert" when quoting Chris with the orange color. Don’t know how to convert it to white.
edited by Gonen on 12/18/2015
Well, I found out myself that you can finish the lay early without any reward when I got suspicion lvl5 because I was being so careless.Eventhough I spent ton of actions, I am not too upset.
As far as I can tell, pretty much all these areas now double the number of cards in your deck. So if you have zero cards waiting to be drawn, you still have zero, but if you have one, you get two. Two gets four, etc. (Up to your deck limit, six or ten for EF.)
This counts for both going into these areas and coming back to London.
I hope this is intended behavior because it really is quite fantastic.[/quote]Based on the response to my report of it, it sounds like this is not intended behavior, but rather an unintended side-effect of the recent revamp of the opportunity timer that is on the docket to be fixed. So if you want to take advantage of this by running lots of heists/flash lays/etc., now is the time.
As far as I can tell, pretty much all these areas now double the number of cards in your deck. So if you have zero cards waiting to be drawn, you still have zero, but if you have one, you get two. Two gets four, etc. (Up to your deck limit, six or ten for EF.)
This counts for both going into these areas and coming back to London.
I hope this is intended behavior because it really is quite fantastic.[/quote]Based on the response to my report of it, it sounds like this is not intended behavior, but rather an unintended side-effect of the recent revamp of the opportunity timer that is on the docket to be fixed. So if you want to take advantage of this by running lots of heists/flash lays/etc., now is the time.[/quote]
Can you truly take advantage of that? A heist/flash lays take dozens of actions to complete. I don’t even have EF myself, but I can’t see EF able to make good use of cards after a long venture.
[quote=Lisbella Peridot]
Can you truly take advantage of that? A heist/flash lays take dozens of actions to complete. I don’t even have EF myself, but I can’t see EF able to make good use of cards after a long venture.[/quote]
Yes, actually. With reasonable luck, anyway. If you have 40 actions, you can go through your deck and say have 30-35 actions left, do the flash lay (29-35+ actions, if you do the easier option), and still have actions left to go through your deck again. It’s not very efficient, but if your main priority is pulling a certain card then it would effectively give you 10 more cards in the day then you would have otherwise. Admittedly it would cost you in menaces, and poor EPA, but if pulling cards was what you wanted to focus on, then it might work out.
I admit that it’s a pretty unusual edge-case, but eh.
Heists can take as little as 4 actions once you’re inside.
I’m very curious about the mechanics behind the difficulty adjustment. I tried the easy Flash Lay first, and then the harder one. When I entered the harder one I still had some cards left in my hand from the easy one, but their difficulty had jumped from straightforward to chancy!
I don’t see any lock/unlock qualities on the options, is it some sort of variable in the skill check itself? Not a feature that is in StoryNexus, as far as I can tell, which is a shame, it has all sorts of potential.
I liked exploring the flash lay, although there was one thing that I thought could be improved. I had gotten my progress to 92 when my suspicion hit 5 and then I got stuck in the storylet that gives you the option to use some Up Your Sleeve or abandon the flash lay. Even using the five Up Your Sleeve required, I still wasn’t able to lower my suspicion enough and had to abandon. That was a little frustrating since I didn’t know what kind of threshold I was working with. Maybe add a "If any of your menaces reach 5, bad things may happen…" sort of warning. It just felt like the danger of menaces was too vague. Otherwise it was a great little adventure, especially for a more late-game player.
Upon a second go, the different approaches to playing became more clear; however, even at a slow pace I did not find enough time to make use of any openings. Still the new mechanics are certainly fun, and made me rethink the way I prepared for a card pull.
edited by Samuel Perryman on 12/19/2015