Hmm, ok, thanks! I’m at Hearts’ Game: Rounds this Run 13 but maybe my cancelling rounds is problematic and I need to play 10 through to actual completion or something. My big actions on Prep are all at levels 4 and 5 and I generally don’t make it there in time to cash it out, so not quite sure if I can physically win with this combo but I’ll keep trying. Guess I should’ve waited for the wiki before picking a randomish team in my enthusiasm to play!
Yeah, looking it up, cancelling a round doesn’t give you that option. You need to play 1 round through to completion, win or lose.
You mentioned a referee autofail - is there a storylet that instantly takes you to cancel the round if you get far enough behind?
If so, that seems like a bug in the design. If your team is so bad you get auto-failed before you get to the end of the round, you’d never get a chance to change it, and it should be reported and hopefully fixed. You’re supposed to be able to change teams after you lose, I think.
No auto-fail, as you mentioned there is a Cancel the Round option under the fixed storylet A Word with the Umpires that will terminate the current round and treat it as a loss. It would seem that that loss isn’t the same as an actual loss played through to completion.
I have King of Tallows, Knight of Livers, and Queen of Loins with KT 19. 5 games played, 5 games won, but it’s really stressful. I’ve had a bunch of close calls, and hope toake it till 7 wins.
Since I can guarantee a KT success, my strategy is to build up Poison Preparations as quickly as possible with the Knight of Livers card (1-2 CP per action). However, it’s risky since to make meaningful progress, I need to get 4-5 Poison Preparations AND draw the right cards. Any meaningful shadowy check is 75%, so it is dicey even after spamming 2nd chances. Overall, making okay progress.
I’m not a fan of this. It is far too unreliable and relies too much on one specific skill, KT. For those of us that played Light Fingers, we can only hope for 80% if we’re lucky.
I can only muster 9 KT and my Shadowy is low, so I’m gong with the Queen of Loins, Page of Roots and Page of Teeth.
I think I will only play this when more details reveal themselves. I have a hunch some unpleasant surprises and twists await the players.
Anyway, I’m currently starved for actions to do other stuff.
Yeah, it definitely feels like endgame “did everything else already” content. Requires a POSI specialization, >=15 KT for reasonable chance of success, lot of actions.
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Oh boy, here I go killing again!
I feel like I’d enjoy this more if the preparation worked a bit more like preparation in scientific experiments or built up faster, so you could take risky actions early on or build up preparations to make them easier and more certain. As it is, you have to throw actions to unlock bigger risks, but as you do you make those risks less effective (because elusiveness builds up) and everything is equally uncertain anyway so you might just gain nothing. It seems sort of counter to making those big roles exciting, which means I haven’t even tried them in three runs round. If you could unlock them all at the same level and they just got harder without prep work, I feel there’d be a lot more excitement to them.
I like the concept here and I’m going to try and get to 7 wins, but it feels really odd that every roll is basically a coin flip, sort of removing any sense that there are ‘risky big options’ and making them all feel kind of samey.
Yes. My best stats are Watchful and Persuasive, and I’m floundering as a result, I think.
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According to the patch notes Heart’s Game has been tweaked, Kataleptic Toxicology difficulty has been adjusted, amongst other things.
Has anyone done a KT-based run after these new adjustments? I’m currently trying a Shadowy run, but failing two 93% challenges in a row had me literally screaming.
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I’m not doing a KT based run (yet), but just judging by the modification in chance of success for me I can say it’s already kicked into effect. At KT 16 I had 70% chance of success earlier today on the King of Tallow cards (idk if it varies by accomplice) and now I have 90% chance of success. This makes me very happy as I will be able to reach 100% with the new KT weapon available once I get my 7th win on this first run. (I was already a Nemesis Licentiate when this begun so I feel somewhat vindicated for Knifegate now)
Also, not sure if this is a bug as it was not mentioned in the patch notes, but earlier in the day new rounds in the same run began with the hand of cards that were left from the previous round and now when I begin a new round I redraw all 3 cards. I mention this because it slightly changes strategy : for example, I used to save Page of Teeth cards for the beginning of the following round because their basic action is most effective before elusiveness kicks in.
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I also did 2 more KT-based runs after the change. They bumped me from 70% success - where I was mostly winning but barely, by the skin of my teeth - to 90% success which led to relatively straightforward wins.
That completed my 7-win run and I switched teams to try a shadowy+dangerous one, and man, that one is so much easier I think because I picked guys that have good options at 2 preparation, and that one guy with an option that gives +2 preparation, instead of requiring me to get 6 cp of preparation one point at a time before I made any good rolls.
I lost 3 runs in a row, changed team according to wiki recommendation, and lost yet another one. I have no idea where is the problem.
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Now that it’s a 90% chance for a KT run (I have the King and Page for KT and the Queen to refresh my hand), and it seems to work a little easier.
For me, it really wasn’t the difficulty, but the fact that you basically needed to play Nemesis to have a chance at winning.
But I’m going to forgive: It needed tweaking. I hope that we’ll get more stories like these for all the MAGCATS. I already had some Cantigaster Venom so the hook is not as useful (it might be useful for something later though, so I’ll pick it up.
But I’m really liking the fact that we have a way to get Compendiums and Damarks. Maybe they’ll be more useful now.
Some days I truly regret what I picked for my Ambition, and this is definitely one of those days.
If I was just a little bit more mechanically minded I’d have the Monstrous Anatomy instead of Player of Chess, one of which is infinitely more useful for hunting, my favourite activity.
Now this event has me wondering if I even should’ve had a horse in that race in the first place and gotten the Kataleptic Toxicology in another Ambition altogether.
Oh, London. I want to roleplay but these success percentages are giving me the side-eye. I think I’ll have a lie down, I’m feeling dizzy.
Fourteen 78% sucess chance actions should not be failed altogether. It’s enough to make a man sick thinking of the actions he’s wasted, forgetting the Poisonous Preparation to even get there.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is, Ace of Spines can go f___k a d____-_____, _____ of ____ with his _____ ___ __ Duke of Yorkshire, _____ with _____, ___, __, ______ -, ___ _______, __ ______ ____, BLOATFINGER.
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Jeez this is hard! I think I failed about 10 times in a row before finally coming up with a team that works, and I’ve got 15 KT! Page of Roots, Knight of Livers and Queen of Loins has been working pretty well for me. You’d think I’d have gotten frustrated enough to hate it before then, but weirdly, I’m actually enjoying it pretty well. Though considerably moreso now that I’ve started winning sometimes.
I never played Knife and Candle, and I generally avoid social elements as much as possible, so it’s not suffering from comparison for me, but I’m pretty chuffed to get a creepy new element unexpectedly like this. Hopefully they’ll settle on some balancing that makes it workable for most people (without killing my current strategy!).
I’m liking it so far, but I know I got lucky with my KT gear. My team really relies on getting Roots with any combo of the Queen or the two Knights. Wish Shadowy wasn’t my weakest stat though. Can only get 75% with slight modification to my KT build. Still don’t think that’s enough to be able to use Spines reliably. Tallow seems like a trap because of the higher prep needed. Without Livers, I doubt you can get to 5 prep in time.
I have a feeling that when the “seasons” change, they’re going to update all the accomplices to mix up which stats are being checked. That way any ambition/profession will have an edge at some point.
While I do like the game and mechanics, I’m really frustrated with the randomness when picking Accomplices.
I had a team I liked - (Queen, King of Spines, Knight of Livers) - but after the first 10 runs the game forces me to pick a new team, and the accomplices I wanted wouldn’t show up. So I’m forced to pick a team I can’t win with as my KT is nowhere near high enough. Then waste 15 - 20 actions to fail a run, start over and try make a new team.
Where again the accomplices I want don’t show up and I have to waste another 20 actions to rinse and repeat.
This has been going on for four or five runs now.