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Do not worry about not being able to pass every step in a caper; For me at least, i cannot get the points for this. I think most of the early capers are about 6-7 steps, try to pass two or three of those steps and generally you will just gain stress for the missed steps. I try to read the caper sections to myself and say "If i fail this is Sadie not going to be able to play the violin again?"

 

Mike

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That is an *especially* important tip, if you are playing Normal or Hard. In order to succeed there, you will definitely need to have really good Inspirations. On Easy, depending on how you play your cards, you can often make it all the way through.

 

Easy level is definitely the way to go if you want to see more of the story in one shot - you most likely will be able to play through 2 character storylines (not in full obviously) and have your pick when the major decision points come.

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Do not worry about not being able to pass every step in a caper; For me at least, i cannot get the points for this. I think most of the early capers are about 6-7 steps, try to pass two or three of those steps and generally you will just gain stress for the missed steps. I try to read the caper sections to myself and say "If i fail this is Sadie not going to be able to play the violin again?"

 

Mike

 

As a counterpoint to this, keep in mind that succeeding in obstacles will almost always raise primary stats and/or relationship scores, and that raising them makes you more easily able to train your skills to succeed in the future...

 

Also, if there are 2 or more skills to beat an obstacle, the developers are sneaky, and sometimes one way might give you better (or at least different) bonuses than another. It's not common, but it happens!

 

And finally, you can outright skip some obstacles by picking the right conversation choices beforehand. I've had characters beat obstacles for me (and you often get a relationship+ that way too!)

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  • 2 months later...

If you click the "Skills" option, clicking the badges and then the specific skill you're interested in will automatically direct you to the skill-up or inspiration locations you need to go to!

 

Perhaps this is old had to some people, but I spent a lot of time clicking every option on a map trying to remember who would give me and Escape Artistry Inspiration versus a skill up! (This setup is not ideal for those of us with poor memories :P )

 

Also, explore maps carefully. Occasionally you can gain skill points and reduce stress.

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  • 7 months later...

At least early on, racking up stress seems like a good thing. Stress level controls how quickly you can train the stress related skills, and you can get upto 90-100 stress fairly easily (if you're trying to get stress) about halfway through Egypt. This means you can cap or 90+ all of the stress skills a little ways past Egypt (of course, drop the stress immediately after you're done). Your skills control how good your inspirations are, and lot of the top level inspirations end up influencing a lot of skills (plus they provide a high general bonus). So by having very high stress related skills, you can get very good inspirations quickly, which let you get through the adventures effectively.

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  • 4 years later...

Clicking Sadie's face will also resume an Adventure chain if you were just on one, which

(a) is good to avoid [accidentally repeating a stalled Red Obstacle when you haven't trained, rested, and/or stocked up on inspiration yet]

(b) mitigates the hunting for which part of the map a given Adventure shifts around to

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OOOOH~ I didn't notice there was a tips thread on here due to its age. Well, I posted this on tumblr a few weeks ago, but I'll post it here too:

·         Play the game on easy mode unless you’re going after the normal and hard difficulty achievements. Save yourself the pain

·         Sterling’s route is by far the hardest, so I recommend not playing his route first.

Relationships and Endings

·         You have to have at least 30 relationship points with a guy by Christmas to be able to activate his Dream route

·         You don’t start going out with Nigel or Sterling until after Christmas

·         Don’t worry if Felix’s dream route doesn’t feel like a dream route, it’s intentional

·         The 0-9, 10-19, and 20-29 relationship endings cannot be viewed in-game due to needing 30 relationship points to activate the friendship event during Christmas

·         There are actually 121 endings

·         The 100 dream endings are drastically different from the others

·         Approximately, the 0-50ish endings are similar and the 51-99 endings are similar

Skills You Should Ignore

·         Poker is never used. EVER. Just ignore it unless you’re going after achievements

·         Riding is only used three times, two of which you can use Animal Handling instead. Just ignore it unless you’re going after achievements

·         Animal handling is only used seven times (which sounds like a lot, but it isn’t), and most of those you can use another skill. Just ignore it unless you’re going after achievements

·         Since you want your stress to be 0 almost constantly, ignore raising the stress skills and instead use inspiration cards for obstacles where stress skills are the only option

Skills You Should Raise

·         Raise perception, deduction, and problem solving early on in the game. The best way to do this is to choose ‘Look out over the City’ in New York as it raises perception and deduction. There isn’t a good way to raise problem solving in New York until after you beat The Serpent Empire Adventure, which unlocks ‘Search for Other Raeks Artifacts’, which raises problem solving and occult lore

Stress

·         ALWAYS start your caper with 0 stress. Always continue capers with 0 stress. Stress impacts obstacle skills drastically, especially on higher difficulty modes.

·         For example, if the easy obstacle should need 10 to pass it, but you have 2 stress going in, now it will take 11 to pass it. On normal mode, if it took 25 to pass it, but you have 2 stress going in, it will instead take 27. On hard mode, if it took 60 to pass it, but you have 2 stress going in, it will instead take 63.

·         Since you want your stress to be 0 almost constantly, ignore raising the stress skills and instead use inspiration cards for obstacles where stress skills are the only option

·         If you really want to raise stress skills, I’d raise awareness the most and fisticuffs the least

Capers

·         An obstacle being ‘red’ on the caper requirements list in-game doesn’t always mean that you have to pass it. Sometimes if you fail it it just moves on, sometimes it makes you rest and retry, and sometimes the obstacles are perfectly normal and the game is just showing it in red due to an error.

·         You have to beat The Main Adventure in Peru for The Albino Alligator Adventure to unlock

·         You DO NOT have to do all of a guy’s capers to get their capers to activate. You just have to follow along with their main adventure. For example, you can view Roland’s main adventure events in Egypt, not do his Egypt caper, view his main adventure events in New York, and then do his Australian caper even though you didn’t do his Egyptian one. HOWEVER, Sterling is the exemption to this (Sterling is usually the exemption to rules). You must finish his Egyptian adventure to unlock some of his main adventure events, you must finish his Indian adventure to unlock some of his main adventure events, and you must finish his Peruvian adventure to unlock some of his main adventure events.

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EDIT:  oops, I misread an old comment and issued something of a 'correction' that was, in fact, not a correction at all.

Regarding Inspiration cards with boosts for more than one Skill:  I'll be working on a comprehensive cross-reference at the wiki.  Someone already built tables of all the cards you can get from non-caper activity; to that we'll add any specialized, caper-reward cards, and lists of where else a specific skill's boosts can turn up both inside and outside of the skill's Type suite.

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On 8/22/2017 at 10:39 PM, sonic-nancy-fan said:

·         ALWAYS start your caper with 0 stress. Always continue capers with 0 stress. Stress impacts obstacle skills drastically, especially on higher difficulty modes.

 aslee4's advice (ramp up Stress early, for the sake of Expansion, while most difficulties are low) seems pretty useful, though; of course it depends on whether one is going for specific achievements or a flawless Dream or whatever; but the earlier one Expands Dodge or Moxie, for example, (a) the sooner one can be racking up more powerful and versatile Inspirations and (b) the less Inspiration will be needed when one comes across a Dodge or Moxie Obstacle.  It seems like a worthwhile experiment, especially with test-saves for broken Driven (or any playthrough that isn't heavily dependent on perfect capers or red-gate Obstacles).

(as an aside - I think I've decided to go for my first Last of the Keatings on my first Hard mode playthrough.  Worth it?)

Edited by Desiderastus
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·         The 0-9, 10-19, and 20-29 relationship endings cannot be viewed in-game due to needing 30 relationship points to activate the friendship event during Christmas

oh, is that what accounts for the 15/121 unattainable endings?  Then shouldn't there be a number above 15 while there are still unacknowledged/unconfirmed/unfixed problems with, e.g., getting Ahmose or Sterling to 100?

Edited by Desiderastus
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17 hours ago, Desiderastus said:

 aslee4's advice (ramp up Stress early, for the sake of Expansion, while most difficulties are low) seems pretty useful, though; of course it depends on whether one is going for specific achievements or a flawless Dream or whatever; but the earlier one Expands Dodge or Moxie, for example, (a) the sooner one can be racking up more powerful and versatile Inspirations and (b) the less Inspiration will be needed when one comes across a Dodge or Moxie Obstacle.  It seems like a worthwhile experiment, especially with test-saves for broken Driven (or any playthrough that isn't heavily dependent on perfect capers or red-gate Obstacles).

(as an aside - I think I've decided to go for my first Last of the Keatings on my first Hard mode playthrough.  Worth it?)

When I play entering all capers with 0 stress, by New Orleans, all of my stats except Poker, Animal Handling, Riding, and the stress stats are all usually 100. I think the problem with raising stress skills is you have to go on capers/see and event to raise stress, but with a lot of stress during capers, it makes them extremely hard. I suppose it comes down to play styles, but I have never had any problems just ignoring stress skills.

Last of the Keatings would be the easiest 100 ending to get on hard mode, by far. So I'd recommend  that or just doing a playthrough solely to get the hard achievement, not caring what ending you get. Warning though, the main adventure in Peru doesn't have any breaks, so that one will be a challenge.

17 hours ago, Desiderastus said:

oh, is that what accounts for the 15/121 unattainable endings?  Then shouldn't there be a number above 15 while there are still unacknowledged/unconfirmed/unfixed problems with, e.g., getting Ahmose or Sterling to 100?

Yeah, that's where the unattainable endings come from. I suppose technically, the final endings for Ahmose and Sterling would be considered unattainable at this point, but I never changed the number from 15 to 17 due to wishful thinking XD.

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21 hours ago, sonic-nancy-fan said:

When I play entering all capers with 0 stress, by New Orleans, all of my stats except Poker, Animal Handling, Riding, and the stress stats are all usually 100.

whoa!  I thought getting both Charm and Wits to 100 was supposed to be tricky - how can all 4 of the basic Types get there with the limited number of early +10 bonuses?  And you can get the whole Dream suite to 100 by then?  whew!

the one thing about Poker I just noticed is that its Inspirations have a hefty General boost across all levels - even with no Poker skill at all, you'll get a +4 ... But even so, that would only be invaluable for a very obscure type of playthrough, or a No-Save run where you never 're-roll' your Inspiration draws

And the early-peak-Stress strategy would almost certainly kill any shot at Dream of Family 100 - but could work well with a romance?

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22 hours ago, Desiderastus said:

whoa!  I thought getting both Charm and Wits to 100 was supposed to be tricky - how can all 4 of the basic Types get there with the limited number of early +10 bonuses?  And you can get the whole Dream suite to 100 by then?  whew!

the one thing about Poker I just noticed is that its Inspirations have a hefty General boost across all levels - even with no Poker skill at all, you'll get a +4 ... But even so, that would only be invaluable for a very obscure type of playthrough, or a No-Save run where you never 're-roll' your Inspiration draws

And the early-peak-Stress strategy would almost certainly kill any shot at Dream of Family 100 - but could work well with a romance?

Oh, you misunderstood (due to my lack of explanation lol). I meant all stats that weren't 'type' stats (athletics, wits, charm, and knowledge). You can't get 100 of all type stats in one playthrough. I always raise everything under them to 100 though (aside from animal handling, riding, poker and stress things), as well as all relationship and dream stats. Sorry for the confusion; I assumed people would know I didn't mean type stats. As for how I raise them all that fast, I guess it boils down to I can get through capers really efficiently since I've done them a lot, and then I have like...15+ days per location to just raise stats. Also, a tip for raising dream stats, raise them A LOT right before Christmas since if you're going on a romance route, your dream drops to 0.

Admittedly, I very seldom re-roll inspiration draws, so Poker could work to my advantage XD.

I could see the early stress strategy working for romance. Though, it could easily backfire. To raise stress skills, having stress helps, and usually if you have a lot of stress, you won't pass all obstacles in challenges. The early capers are easy '70+ skill point inspiration card' getters, and once you start the dream route and your dream hits 0, Peru capers can be difficult without many '70+ skill point inspiration cards', which you might not have if you have high stress. There are a whole lot of 'ifs' in there, but I can see it being a problem unless managed really well.

Also, another thing I tend to do is leave some capers in New York unfinished. That way, I can go back later and finish them whenever I need the '70+ skill point inspiration cards'.

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  • 3 weeks later...
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Also, another thing I tend to do is leave some capers in New York unfinished. That way, I can go back later and finish them whenever I need the '70+ skill point inspiration cards'.

 

 that makes perfect sense; I was wondering how I was going to hold onto those cards for long enough that such a high value would actually be useful (especially on Easy mode!) - and of course if I get them as soon as they're available, they accumulate far faster than I can raise Dream ... which makes it harder and harder to pull off some of the other capers ...

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I start The Evelyn Adventure, The Book form the Low Countries Adventure, The Anna Adventure, and The Ebbets Field Frame-Up Adventure, but leave the last 'section' of them for later so I can get an easy card.

  • The Evelyn Adventure's last section has such low requirements, by the time you need the card for it, you should just be able to breeze through the final obstacle.
  • The Book form the Low Countries Adventure's last section has no obstacles.
  • The Anna Adventure's final section will probably require one or two inspirations, but it isn't hard by any means, especially later in the game, and it may cause this fun glitch lol:
  • The The Ebbets Field Frame-Up Adventure's final section will probably require one or two inspirations like Anna's Adventure, but they aren't hard either.

 

Another good tip is unless you're going for an achievement, avoid doing The Third Eye Gang Adventure of The Golden Scarab Adventure. They are easily some of the hardest capers due to how they don't have breaks (unless you fail something, but then you can't get the big inspiration card at the end, making finishing them almost pointless anyway).

 

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