Yeah, I just chose a background after getting the Manual of Miracles… but by then I had gained one point of pages (from the university) after starting with 50 from the Horizon Codex, so the game telling me "pages hasn’t changed, because it’s higher than 50" came as an unpleasant surprise. It might be an idea to change that particular cap.
Now that I think about it… since you generally start with the comatose ferret assigned as a mascot, wouldn’t that make having A Dream of Red render the priest background unusable unless you deliberately waive your past until you unassign it?
[quote=Vex]Yeah, I just chose a background after getting the Manual of Miracles… but by then I had gained one point of pages (from the university) after starting with 50 from the Horizon Codex, so the game telling me "pages hasn’t changed, because it’s higher than 50" came as an unpleasant surprise. It might be an idea to change that particular cap.
Now that I think about it… since you generally start with the comatose ferret assigned as a mascot, wouldn’t that make having A Dream of Red render the priest background unusable unless you deliberately waive your past until you unassign it?[/quote]
The game can distinguish between base stats and modified stats.
I don’t even have a legacy item yet and I’ve been doing this on my last five captains. Poet is the clear choice after I messed around with the other options. The ability to get secrets faster enables massive growth of all the other stats way better than any other advantage the others have, and pages is already the toughest stat to raise in the game. Plus it makes the occasional Storylet where you reflect on your past give huge pages bonuses (I assume this raises your base bonus stat based on your background, but I can’t remember exactly since I’ve played Poet so often). On top of that, it make’s the big Port Cecil tournament of chess WAY easier to access and begin earlier, giving you a good money maker/access to Scintillack much earlier.
I’d say Poet is OP and needs nerfing, but honestly I think the reality is that the other classes need other advantages, and perhaps better ways to raise their pages.
As for the topic at hand . . . yeah, the Legacy items and backgrounds should stack in my opinion, and the cap should be at 75, not fifty. That way an experienced player can theoretically start with all 50 stats and one 75, and jump right into the heart of the game with less concern and easy challenge passing at the start. It takes a lot to get these items (I should know as I haven’t gotten one yet - still a fairly new player) so the player should get big rewards for them.
Besides, the stats obviously go past 100 (since most of the officers have limits at raising your stats at 100 or 150), and I’ve seen at least one challenge that required a 175 stat (in Wisdom and with Pages of all things) with plenty that must go there considering I’ve got pages at 89 in my current game and I’ve seen other challenges to pages that show 50% or less chance of success, so starting at 75 in a stat is hardly game breaking for a lot of these later challenges.
A quick note from the mechanics side. I’m poking through game files to update the wiki and the challenges tend to come set at one of three value: 50, 100, 150 (with some extreme stuff - Frostfound for example - at 200 or 250). This is an abstraction, which translates to in-game values of approx. 82, 164, 246, 328 and 420. Some of these are obviously just meant to not-be-guaranteed.
The “view from above” where you reflect on your past - yep, adds 5 to your starting start up to a cap of 100 (the god’s attentions equivalent have no cap, but raise 2 stats by 2).
So lemme see if I understand this correctly. I now have almost all my cool stat boosting books and then I’ll suicide and start again. I want to pick poet because I like that background. Now because of those books all my stats will be at 50 yeah? So if I then choose ‘correspondent’ to carry over pages (which I won’t because it’s terrible) and even one page gets carried over and the score is now 51 and I pick poet as my background will I then not get my 75 pages score? Do I only get it if it’s exactly at 50? Or do backgrounds not add anything stat-wise once you have all the legacy items?
Damn. Oh well guess I’ll just skip the iron and pages one then. Unless… is there a reliable way to upgrade pages? See I really want the magician’s… hook for my canon playthrough but he needs at least 20 more pages than iron which would be almost impossible with all the legacy items since there doesn’t seem to be any officers that raise it. I’ve heard you can stand someplace and do something and that raises it by 5, is that repeatable?
Yup. Raising pages is tricky. If you want to hook the magician, I’d recommend grabbing some officers who boost pages early on (not many), and going that route to initiate it.