General Help Requested

[freespace2dotcom]

Hello, I just finished my first runthrough and enjoyed the game immensely. My typical response to games' learning curves is to jump in and learn as I go. But I have a few questions before I start a second go-around:

 

1. I didn't see any way to train attributes like intelligence, or charm. Is this possible or is it set in stone after character creation?

 

2. My character experienced Ennui for the second half or so. I read the description but I fail to understand how to properly cure it. do you simply go on adventures in the puzzle area? how does one raise "playfulness"? That was not too obvious to me.

 

3. The game organizes days into three parts. I understand that the default option on weekdays is "rest", so to me, I see that as a sleeping time, and to change that would imply that the character stays up all night? or is it supposed to simply go only to the evening and sleep is always assumed to happen at night? This goes with question #2 because of the description of going through "long nights" even though I rarely change that from its default "rest"

 

4. Even though my character focused overwhelmingly on studies and training in class related skills, he still got some underwhelming scores on a few finals. Based on this I suspect that other things are required to increase scores but haven't seen anything else regarding it. Is there?

 

5. My character was a bookworm, no doubt. Low on the social ladder and no real skills in the area to make it worthwhile to pursue IMO. I had a few instances of being bullied but nothing that couldn't be handled. However, is there a reason to persue relationships or is that something to be developed in future years?

 

Thanks/

[Schwarzbart]

1) You can gain boost to Attributes from some Research at level 10, some Skill/Sub Skill level give passive Abilitys that als bost Attributes and also from most Adventure chains at theyr last step.

(Also there is magic that boost your Attributes for some time)

2) playfulness is a Sabotage Sub Skill

3) No the 3th time slot is free to use for you, rest is just the dafault placement. If I remember corect there 2 more time slot per day that we dont even see for sleeping.

4) The Exam scores are based on your Skill level but you only get some percent of this score if your Study level is not 10 at the time of the exam.

5) Some Adventures only open up when you have high enough Relationship with a Student also Clique Members help you big times because if they are bether they make the rolls for you in Adventures and Events.

[Zincat]

1) you can increase attibutes by completing some adventures up to the last step (no you don't get to know first what attribute will increase), by bringing up certain skills (for example, reaching Planning 3 will give you Learn from Mistakes, an ability which increases intelligence and insight by 1), or by reaching level 10 of certain researches (example, researching Acrobatics to level 10 will increase Finesse by 1. The wiki is your friend here if you want to know beforehand). Also, reaching level 10 of Study in some classes will increase an attribute by 1, and there are items you can find or create that increase your stats. Finally, having some people in your clicque will give you an attribute gain

 

2) Uhm never saw that mood, can't help there... Maybe your character.. does too little and he's bored?

 

3) the third part of the day is not night, it's evening. To be honest, there's no real point in ever using rest unless you are low on vitality, or high on stress. If that is not the case, the evening should be used for training skills, studying, going on adventures or any other kind of action. Don't waste precious time resting too much!

 

4) to get high scores on the exams, first you need to have Study level of that class at 10. That is not negotiable, you HAVE to get study at 10. If you don't study, you may know the subject but you don't know how to answer in a proper way in the tests!. After that, you should bring up as much as possible the parent skill of the subject, say Dialectic. Some can go even beyond 10 with some moods or abilities. Finally, you can at the very end.. shall we say... give yourself a hand, by using abilities and spell that temporarily raise your parent skill. As long as the bonus is active when you have the exam, you can go beyond score 100!

 

5)Well, nobody actually forces you to have social interactions, that's for sure. But there are a few nice things to social interaction as well. First you can befriend people and make a clicque, and gain some abilities depending on the student you befriend. Second, once you reach a certain level of friendship with a student, you will have access to his adventure. There is one specific adventure for each student. After that, you can use people during adventures to have help, even though it puts a small strain on your friendship.

And finally yes, in the first year you're still a small kid, but eventually there will also be romance options and the like. And it does feel you are making a more complete character as well, some of us play for the roleplay factor.

[Schwarzbart]

if you need more infos just ask my answear was keept so short on intention to not spoil anything that lies hidden within the game.

[Mikka]

You've gotten great replies right now, but I started writing my answer this morning, then the internet at this hotel died, so, um, I couldn't post it, but now I can, so, why not. Mostly just repeating what the others have said, but maybe I said something interesting.

 

1. I didn't see any way to train attributes like intelligence, or charm. Is this possible or is it set in stone after character creation?

 

In general, you can't train attributes the same way you train skills. However, they can still be raised.

 

The first method is through directly raising due to a few very specific abilities you can use. Raise your Running skill to one, and you'll find out you have the Groundskeepers office and you can run different training routes from there. Run the hardest- I believe it's 'Run a Potentially Crippling Training Route', and there's a 10 or so percent chance of raising your Fitness with each run (along with an automatic four stress: it's hard). There are other places, too- a trip to a gym you'll discover while raising Athletics has like, a 3% chance of raising Strength or Fitness. If you study Incantation, you can eventually apply to study at an Incantation school in Mineta, and doing some irregular studying there has a chance to raise, I believe, Insight, Intelligence, and maybe even Fitness. These places are far between and have very low chances of raising the attribute, but they do exist.

 

The second method to raise attributes is through passive abilities. Raise your Athletics to 8- by getting, I dunno, Running, Competition, and Wrestle up to 8, which isn't too big. Boom! You get Well Toned, which is an automatic +1 Strength and Fitness. In the same field, if you boost your Archery and your Running to 11, you get +1 Fitness from each. Researching- which you get from Study Habits 4, if I'm remembering correctly- also often gets you +1 attribute (if it doesn't, it gives you +1 max ability (such as, say, Archery or Running, allowing you to hit 11)); researching Athletics to 10 gets you another +1 Fitness. You'll be very, very fit at this point, obviously. Forming a clique (by successfully Befriending a fellow student) also gives you an ability- it can be passive, or activated. Some have passive abilities to raise an attribute: the most notable is crazy Emilia Picotti with her +3 Charm passive ability (perhaps the most overpowered clique-member in the game, but it's hard to argue with a bonus like that), but my buddy Silke Niederstatter has a passive that gives you +1 Fitness.

 

The final method for gaining attributes is completing adventures. A successful completion of the last step of almost any adventure gains you an attribute increase (and the few that don't offer nice enough rewards to make up for it). The second part of the mentor adventure with Oan- after she asks you to help her find her trees, if you go through that to the end and successfully Befriend the trees, gives you plus one Insight and Intelligence. Another semi-easy adventure is the Wasting Sickness/Ravenprix/Library adventure: even if at the end you can't convince the adults to be nice normal adults, you're still looking at a plus one Luck increase.

 

2. My character experienced Ennui for the second half or so. I read the description but I fail to understand how to properly cure it. do you simply go on adventures in the puzzle area? how does one raise "playfulness"? That was not too obvious to me.

 

Ah, my first few characters labored under the Ennui burden, too. Either raise your Playfulness skill (it's under Sabotage), or keep at least one stress on yourself at all times. Either should take the Ennui away.

 

3. The game organizes days into three parts. I understand that the default option on weekdays is "rest", so to me, I see that as a sleeping time, and to change that would imply that the character stays up all night? or is it supposed to simply go only to the evening and sleep is always assumed to happen at night? This goes with question #2 because of the description of going through "long nights" even though I rarely change that from its default "rest"

 

Though you can't actually see them, and they don't make really much difference in year one (save for if you look at Duration of spells, you'll see them calculated in- a spell that gives you a bonus for 3 days will work for 15 turns, usually), there are actually five parts of the day (early morning and late night). It's assumes your character spends some time sleeping during those two times. However, the time doesn't actually count for resting away things that need to be rested away (health, stress, bad conditions), so... basically, they're useless mechanically, but useful for roleplaying. Assume your character gets a fairly decent amount of sleep during those hidden times, and the chosen option 'Rest' is actually more like a really long, relaxing nap. Part of the key to a very successful play-through is doing as little resting as possible. Rest when if you don't rest, your character's going to be sent to the infirmary due to running out of Vitality, having too much Stress, or being broken by bad conditions and spells on them. Otherwise, goof off! Eat to restore vit! Play on the fields to get rid of stress! Study, train, adventure!

 

4. Even though my character focused overwhelmingly on studies and training in class related skills, he still got some underwhelming scores on a few finals. Based on this I suspect that other things are required to increase scores but haven't seen anything else regarding it. Is there?

 

Answer of two parts: Depends on the course, really, and then 'probably yeah, but it's hard to say for sure'.

 

Let's look at Botany, which is in my opinion one of the easiest courses. Assume you have around 3 Insight. Botany has four skills: Agriculture, Flowers, Seeds and.. uh, shoot. Roots! That's it. None of them have a high 'training modifier' (training modifier is what makes it harder to train- oh, I don't know, Poisons when compared to Running), Professor Vickery covers them all in class, and there aren't so many that it'll take forever for them all to get trained. Basically, if you attend all your classes (or even most), you're going to have 10 Agriculture, Flowers, Seeds, and Roots (and if you don't, you can study the fields for easy raises for three of those skills). Very, very easy. Then all you need to do is Study Botany ten times (using the Study action, or preferably the Study at the V Library option). Then you have 10 Agriculture, 10 Flowers, 10 Seeds, 10 Roots, Botany 10 because of having three tens, and then Study Level Botany 10 (though you'll probably actually have 11's due to picking up similar skills that boost those, but I'm off topic).

 

That seems like a perfect 100, yes? But you'll actually probably score higher, unless you're in extremely bad shape (try to avoid being in comas for exams, especially if Creme is around ). Part of that is randomness. Part of it? We don't really know.

 

Jump over to Calligraphy. The good Professor will never teach you Bookbinding or Forgery. But both are Calligraphy skills. Are they included in the final exams? What about the Flourish homework extra credit option? How much does that get you?

 

I don't really know.

 

My advice: get all sub-skills for that class to 10, and Study Level 10, then shrug. That's easier said then done, of course. Botany (and most magic courses) have four subskills: History has, what, eight? And some are a pain in the neck. In the end, though, raising skills to 10 and making sure you got your Study level to 10 (study level is the little book icon that shows up next to your courses on the general skills list) is the most I can advise. Check Nyaa's thread to see if Legate clarified something I missed or got confused about.

 

5. My character was a bookworm, no doubt. Low on the social ladder and no real skills in the area to make it worthwhile to pursue IMO. I had a few instances of being bullied but nothing that couldn't be handled. However, is there a reason to persue relationships or is that something to be developed in future years?

 

Many adventures don't show up on your list unless you have a good relation with your fellow student. Some events are the same. Some abilities can't be used unless you have a really good friend (Deflect Distraction, for example).

 

The big advantage is cliqueing, though. A clique is started by a student succeeding in a Befriend roll against your character (though that doesn't always seem to stick if it's NPC to you- a bit confusing), or by you succeeding in a Befriend roll against a fellow student. Once in a clique with you, you'll get a new ability. Sometimes it's passive, like Emilia and Silke's attribute expanding I talked about above. Sometimes it's active, and you press it when you needed. Sometime it's incredible awesome, sometime it's incredibly useless, but it's usually interesting.

 

Also, when you're cliqued with someone, you'll notice that you can, er, sacrifice them, to put it bluntly. On adventures (and only those), you'll see the option 'Sacrifice a Clique Member'. You select a purple choice that you cannot succeed in no matter how you try it, and then you send a clique member to do it. You take a good drop in relationship points with them, and you aren't told what happened (the worst part- you can be at step six in an Adventure, unable to pass it, sacrifice your clique member, then start step seven with no idea what the heck just happened but the adventure certainly thinks you know), but it can get you past a brick wall of purple that you can't get around.

 

On a less violent note, especially early in the game, clique members can help in adventures by skill rolls. Say some random adventure has a Rimbal exit, of all things. You don't have any Rimbal skill but Endurance, and aren't too good at that Fitness stuff, either. Yet you have Godina's Zorzi or Luti in your clique. You might find the Rimbal option is green anyway: the game has automatically for the adventure only put in Zorzi or Luti's much higher Rimbal attribute+ability instead of your own. After you play for a while and are shooting heads and shoulders above your classmates due to your better management of your skills then they can do, it won't happen as often, but early game adventures can be made a heck of a lot easier because of that.

 

In Year 2, we'll also be looking at best friend systems and more clique related activities and dormmates, too, which will make social relations probably even more useful.

 

Thanks!

 

Hope I helped a bit.

[freespace2dotcom]

First of all thanks a bunch for the replies!

 

I will surely do better the next play around, but I do have some new questions now.

 

For #1, I see that adventuring is more important than I had initially given it credit for. I'll focus on that a bit more next time.. But now that I think of it, does your stats level affect the speed at which you can raise your skills in related areas? Or is it just train skills and get bonus stats?

 

For #2, I looked under the espionage skill and I guess I never unlocked playfulness. I guess I made my character study too hard... hehe.. So.. How do you unlock that?

 

For #3, I don't have a new question. I will use that time more wisely now.

 

For #4, I had study at 10 for all classes, but the skill tree for classes varied. My character did at least decently on average, for example all parent skills were at at least 9. I think my character had some knack for revision because he blew it out of the water in the 150s, but that was the only one. I was surprised because my character was taking history and a few of those sub-skills were still at 2 but the parent skill was at 9. I suspect I'll do better this time around from the advice you all gave me, but I am curious about whether skills train faster if you have the right attributes. It took a long time to get the skills to 9 or so, and I felt there wasn't much time to do anything else.

 

For #5, I really need to make friends the second time around. My first time I had no charm and didn't know how to raise it so all attempts failed like adding water to a beaker filled with potassium. (!)

 

 

Thanks again for being so helpful~!

[Mikka]

For #1, I see that adventuring is more important than I had initially given it credit for. I'll focus on that a bit more next time.. But now that I think of it, does your stats level affect the speed at which you can raise your skills in related areas? Or is it just train skills and get bonus stats?

 

Yes! This ties in to the answer to number four. Basically, each skill has a 'Training Modifier'. Many common skills have a training modifier of '1.0', which basically means that with an 'average' score, it will take one 'train' (or however you get the skill) to level up. Less common skills have higher training modifiers. So the common Conversation is at 1.00, less common Storytelling is at 1.50, and then the needed to be well honed Danger Sense clocks in at 2.50. So a character trying to raise Danger Sense with the same 'average' score will need to train Danger Sense twice (or three times) for it to go from, I dunno, 4 to 5.

 

As the score gets higher, it gets tougher to raise- the majority of skills are raised from 0 to 1 by a single training sessions, while the majority of skills going to 9 to 10 will need three or more training sessions.

 

Yet your attributes are calculated in there and 'reduce' the amount of times to level the skills. Also known as: Applications of Arithmetic has an easy 1.00 Training Modifier. My character with 7 Intelligence needs only one training session to raise it even at say, level 6 to, oh, 7. My character with 1 intelligence (sort of a gag bully character) would need something more like four.

 

So, there are three numbers there: your attribute, the level you're raising the skill, and the training modifier. Someone figured out the exact equation, but I'll let you search it out if you want it: it's not too difficult, but knowing it might make things in to too much of a numbers game (it does for me at times, sadly). In any case, though, for attribute, the higher the better, for training modifier, the lower the better (there are a few skills- one I believe up Enspell's Concentration- is to reduce training modifiers, too).

 

There are diminishing returns for attribute influence: I go overboard and try and boost things to 10 before letting it go, but 6-7 is probably fine.

 

For #2, I looked under the espionage skill and I guess I never unlocked playfulness. I guess I made my character study too hard... hehe.. So.. How do you unlock that?

 

But did you look under Sabotage?

 

Honestly? The easy way (applicable for all skills) is trying playfulness exits in events and adventures to see if that unlocks it, as well as reading phemes and passive locations very carefully. Even if the pheme/location only raises the stat for a moment, it will still have unlocked it for you to raise. Having said that, Playfulness is pretty easy. Do Schoolyard Education under Social Skills to learn the Bully skills, if you don't have them, then Raise Tease to 1, then attend the Freak Show at Jorndathal's Circus, then you'll be informed of the main Circus where you can work for Playfulness.

 

For #4, I had study at 10 for all classes, but the skill tree for classes varied. My character did at least decently on average, for example all parent skills were at at least 9. I think my character had some knack for revision because he blew it out of the water in the 150s, but that was the only one. I was surprised because my character was taking history and a few of those sub-skills were still at 2 but the parent skill was at 9. I suspect I'll do better this time around from the advice you all gave me, but I am curious about whether skills train faster if you have the right attributes. It took a long time to get the skills to 9 or so, and I felt there wasn't much time to do anything else.

 

I mostly babbled about the attributes above, but just to note: the Parent skill will be the lowest of your three highest subskills. So you have Early Empires at 2, Legacy of Many Towers 7, and then The Calamities 10 (and others all 1's and zeroes), then your History is 2. If you then Raise Early Empires to 10 but don't touch the others, your History is 7. If you randomly raise, I dunno, The History of Magic to 8, your History is then 8. Gera probably explains it better then I do in that huge long letter.

 

For #5, I really need to make friends the second time around. My first time I had no charm and didn't know how to raise it so all attempts failed like adding water to a beaker filled with potassium. (!)

 

Heh.

 

Here's one hint about friendships the game sadly doesn't make completely obvious: not only do you need to be friends with people to get them in your clique, your clique-members need to get along or it'll fall to pieces. If Amada and Joana are both 7 to you and uncliqued, you can likely both get them in with a nice Befriend roll- but if they're at -2, you'll be told your clique-members are fighting and asked to choose a side as it splits. You need to use the Gossip action to make them friends to prevent that. I generally just raise to 3, but to not have a tiny penalty to your Befriend roll for the second person, all clique members need to like them at 5 or plus relation.

 

As you can imagine, this gets harder to manage the bigger your clique gets... but the bigger it gets, the more rewards your getting too, of course.

[swang]

First of all thanks a bunch for the replies!

 

I will surely do better the next play around, but I do have some new questions now.

 

For #1, I see that adventuring is more important than I had initially given it credit for. I'll focus on that a bit more next time.. But now that I think of it, does your stats level affect the speed at which you can raise your skills in related areas? Or is it just train skills and get bonus stats?

 

For #2, I looked under the espionage skill and I guess I never unlocked playfulness. I guess I made my character study too hard... hehe.. So.. How do you unlock that?

 

For #3, I don't have a new question. I will use that time more wisely now.

 

For #4, I had study at 10 for all classes, but the skill tree for classes varied. My character did at least decently on average, for example all parent skills were at at least 9. I think my character had some knack for revision because he blew it out of the water in the 150s, but that was the only one. I was surprised because my character was taking history and a few of those sub-skills were still at 2 but the parent skill was at 9. I suspect I'll do better this time around from the advice you all gave me, but I am curious about whether skills train faster if you have the right attributes. It took a long time to get the skills to 9 or so, and I felt there wasn't much time to do anything else.

 

For #5, I really need to make friends the second time around. My first time I had no charm and didn't know how to raise it so all attempts failed like adding water to a beaker filled with potassium. (!)

 

 

Thanks again for being so helpful~!

 

1) Most adventures will get you 1 or 2 skills per time period, with a payoff of an attribute at the end of a sequence. Depending on what you typically do, that may or may not be more efficient for you.

 

2) You can do an action at the following locations (their unlocks follow the locations)

Grotto of the Gentle Vines (Art - Satyric Revelry 2)

Jorndahl's Circus (Bully - Tease 10)

Old Stockages (Espionage - Escape Artist 2)

 

or cast a spell on yourself with the following additional phemes (their unlocks follow the phemes)

Jovial (Bully - Tease 7, Sabotage - Practical Jokes 1)

Needle (Bully - Tease 4, Bully - Insult 7)

 

Or cast the following spells (their unlocks follow the spells)

Blandislaw's 'Game' (Bully - Tease 8)

Effervescence of Spirit (Art - Creativity 9)

Embracing Excess (Art - Satyric Revelry 6)

Exploding Seed (Botany - Seed 5)

Fill the Night with Stars (Incantation 9)

Little Delirium (Glamour - Glamour Spells 3)

Rise of the Tides (Astrology - Moons 5)

Sparkling Fields (Astrology - Stars 3)

Streets of Ice (Incantation - Incantation Spells 1)

The Lesser Candle of Avila (History - Pride of a Rebel Queen 8)

 

4) Look at the Dominant Attribute for each of those skills, the higher your dominant attribute is, the easier it is to train. To have a 1 step 9 to 10, you need a dominant attribute of 6

[swang]

And Finally, go visit the wiki (which is where I got the answers for your question) and help out. If you don't Durand will come back to life and smite you.

[Legate of Mineta]

Jeff;

 

Actually, the Imperial Temple teaches that Durand is *not* dead, but instead doomed eternally to walk Elumia until the Dragons are destroyed and the Exile healed.

 

So it's said, anyway...

[freespace2dotcom]

All righty.. Overall the second playthrough went much more smoothly. Amazing the difference in outcome when you don't rest every day.

 

Still Had trouble making friends though. I tried increasing the befriend parent skill some ways but the command to befriend someone was still purple even though I had raised a relationship with a fellow to 10.

 

Apart from that I have just one more question:

 

How does the import feature work for moving on to year 2? I noticed the game automatically ends without prompting you to save. Is there a hidden transfer file or do you need to save right at the last second? Or is there some other way?

[Schwarzbart]

You will need to save bevore the last day.

So every thing you will do on the last day is lost. (thats why I usual just leave the rest bevore I process the very last Sunday if I process this day at all)

[Mikka]

Befriend always shows up as purple in your list, if that helps any (so does gossip, and the majority of social actions). Once you click on it, and select the student you wish to Befriend, the action will change to a color that reflects the difficulty: as its an opposed roll, the game can't really calculate how difficult Befriending is until it knows which student it's rolling against. Also, always Befriend in the Great Hall, for the +10% success chance.

 

...Befriend's roll color does not seem to calculate in the 'is this clique member friends with all other clique members?' penalty to the roll. Befriend was very green to me when I tried to grab Amista for my clique, for example, but after five tries, I couldn't get her despite that. Once I Gossiped her relationship with Casper (who was already in my clique) from 2 to 5, though, Amista joined on my first Befriend.

 

And yeah, as Schwarzbart said, you need to save yourself on the second to last day. I actually take my 'final saves', and put them in a separate folder somewhere so I don't accidentally overwrite them... it may help to save it with the word FINAL in the save name so you know not to delete it. Unless you're not the type to accidentally delete things. ;;

[Legate of Mineta]

A quick note here- you can actually save anywhere you want in Year 1 and import, but Year 2 begins on 28 Kaliri.