Z's Guide to Adventures

[89157Z]

I've never actually finished an entire adventure line. They are neat, but there's never enough time. Nevertheless I am going to share my methodology. Perhaps it will help those who have an even harder time than I with the adventures. Perhaps it will open me up to critiques that will help me improve my method. Either of these outcomes is good! My fellow Academagians, feel free to snipe and object freely.

 

FIrst off, I only adventure on two days following a weekend. This can be Sunday and Monday if I prepare on Saturday, or Monday and Tuesday if I prepare on Sunday. It can also be any day after a holiday. If I skip class for preparation, it can be any day following such a class skip.

 

The Preparation:

 

Preparation involves spending an entire day amplifying myself with magic. The adventures often demand more experience than a young school student is likely to have. Some of them demand more than a young school student is able to have! (Roll vs 23+ checks, I'm looking at you.) This is exactly what we would expect. At the same time, being impudent youngsters and determined would-be heroes, we're not going to let a little problem like not knowing what we're doing get us down. How do we overcome it? Magic!

 

I don't adventure until I have either the spell Cleanse and Remake, or else the spell Reveal Flaw. Cleanse and Remake channels the divine through your character, turning you into a lesser avatar for a few days. If you stack a few castings, it turns you into a not-so-lesser avatar! Every casting is +3 to all attributes except charm, which gets a +4. It also applies a -1 penalty to all rolls. Casting the spell itself requires an Insight/Piety roll versus 13. To demonstrate the effects of this, imagine that we have a Luck/Malice roll facing us (just to pick a random pairing of stat and skill). You have a meager 1 in Malice, but 3 in luck. Your range of possibilities is 2 through 7. If the roll versus check number is a 7, you're not likely to get it, though it's narrowly possible. If you Cleanse and Remake, you now have a 6 in luck and a -1 penalty. Your possibility range becomes 1 through 12. Your odds of success went up, even though the lower bound went down. A triple-casting would have raised your luck to 12 and your penalty to -3. This would generate the probability range of -1 through 23. You are now probably going to be successful on the check. Dealing with the gods is a strange numbers game, though. They grant a certain insight into the fundamental structure of the world to their faithful. It may substitute for skill sometimes, but it's still not like being granted skill. For that, we need Reveal Flaw.

 

The way Reveal Flaw works is that you get a +3 to all actions for two days. So on our Luck/Malice roll with 3 luck and 1 malice, a caster who has had their flaws revealed to them will operate at a probability range of 5 through 10. A triple-casting of Reveal Flaw will give you 11 through 16! This second one is of course an automatic success. Reveal Flaw looks a lot better than Cleanse and Remake now. So why would we cast Cleanse and Remake? The problem is the size of the probability gap. Triple-casting Cleanse and Remake raises the dim possibility of succeeding at things you never knew you never knew. Even triple-cast, Reveal Flaw works much better when amplifying the skills you've already got rather than raising them from nothing.

 

You can stack these together, of course. I often cast Reveal Flaw, then double-cast Cleanse and Remake. On a 3/1 roll, this would give me the augmented probability range of 3 through 21. Almost as good as triple-casting Cleanse and Remake, and it reduces the small but embarrassing possibility of failing rolls you really shouldn't.

 

Where to Get Them:

 

Cleanse and Remake is the more straightforward of these two. Practice your Voice skill (under Music) until you learn about Arcadius Temple. Then pray at Arcadius Temple until your piety is high enough to gain the spell. This should occur around Piety 7. To maximize casting success, you might want to maximize your piety. Interesting trick: If you cast Cleanse and Remake, the boost to all your stats makes training easier! You may not get skill from the divine, but they are happy to help you into remaking yourself into what you most desire to be. I like to think of the training boost as the entire reason why the spell is known as 'and Remake'.

 

Reveal Flaw is the one I almost always obtain second. I can't describe how to obtain it right now, sadly... None of my presently active save games have it. I'll edit this post as soon as I can describe where to get it.

[Schwarzbart]

dont forget to mention the Spalls and actions to temporary have the rolls for one SS have replaced with a other SS (This switch only affect the roll so fare and dont change the color coding!)

 

1) Animal Analogy from Animal Husbandry

2) Revision of Skills from Revision Methodes

 

Also the universal spells that add 5 Points to one SS

 

1) Postive Alteration of Mater from Theory of Revision (be carefull you will take damage from, this)

2) From Novice to Master a Revision Spell but I dont remember where you get this.

 

For the Familiar Adventures the Spell Familiar Education is your friend because its the only known spell that add a temporary boost to your Familiar SS sadly again I dont remember where you get it.

 

For Cleanse and Remake I prefere a sligt diferent aproach:

After 1 time use of Arcadius Temple I change to Give Charity and Work because for the temple you have to pay 10 pims each time you use it and Ethics 10 also gives you 10 poinst to your Parent Aproval!

But then you still have to increase prayer with a other action/ability because you sure whant to have Druands Prayer grove (+2 to all Relligion SS) from level 2 of Prayer and probably also need level 5 because of the beseech pheme

I also curently have Music as fixed Study obeject because it also gives you a early access to the Venalicium Library and this library is a great help for your Study needs (and your Research skills to get the other Library)!

[Mikka]

Question Self. Learn and love Question self. Plus one stress (no big deal) in return for a +1 bonus to all actions and a general upped success chance, IIRC. It comes from dancing up the Dialect trees, but I couldn't tell you which one exactly.

 

In my non-magic playthorugh, I also made use of Pray for Guidance, and even Bold Action. Cleanse and Remake is, however, much better.

[Cael Evenstar]

Reveal Flaw is the one I almost always obtain second. I can't describe how to obtain it right now, sadly... None of my presently active save games have it. I'll edit this post as soon as I can describe where to get it.

 

It's possible to get the Reveal Flaw spell through the Planning skill, I think it's level 7, but I'm not certain. Planning shows up reasonably often in random events, can be trained by building a sandcastle (which I *think* is unlocked through Creativity), zoology students can get access to the Planning skill through Insects 3 (which gives a bonus to planning and some other abilities).

[swang]

The location helps. Don't stay in your room! go to a location that gives you either the additional stats or the additional skills. Remember, if you know the skill to use, +2 on that skill is better than +1 on the stat.

 

Every little bit helps.

[Torolf]

Don't forget your familiar bonuses. With 'Improved Familiar Handling' (unlocked at Zoology level 5) you can train your familiar in four skills at once. It does take work to get your bond level to 10, but after that, you can trail your familiar easier than you can learn things yourself sometimes.

[Cael Evenstar]

Don't forget to bring some friends!

According to the manual, if your clique members have higher skills than you, you can use theirs instead of your own during adventures.

Generally, this is only useful for the lower difficulty adventurers, as the higher difficulties will generally require a lot of stacking magic to complete (I had Study Habits 10, and Intelligence 6, and the Dinner Party adventure remained stubbornly purple even after a couple of stacking buffs), but if you plan to specialize in, for example, magical studies or physical activities, making friends with one of the more social characters will be very helpful during your earlier adventures- and as a result, can help you unlock skills you don't have on yourself.

[Burnheart]

Don't forget about the spell Law of the Circular, it adds 5 points to a single skill and -1 points to 5 random skills, very useful if you know what skill you need to use, i think you get it from one of the Geometry skills but i don't know which.

[Schwarzbart]

When you have a Char with Arithmetic orientation Mathematical Acuity is your friend because it gives you 2x +3 to skills you choose (yes it can be 2x the same for a total of 6)

You get this spell with Identities of Arithmetic 6

[ackron]

Another useful ability is Practice Run, obtained from either metallurgy 8 or forge 8 (I got them both at once, and I'm not sure which one gave me the bonus). It gives you +4 in a chosen skill with an Insight/Planning roll vs. 6, and +2 in another skill (or the same skill) with an insight/planning roll vs 11. It costs 5 pims

 

And then there is Creative Approach (from Creativity 10) which allows you to re-roll all rolls made in challenges for 2 days, taking the better result in either case (naturally, this combos very well with something that gives you a big roll range, like Cleanse and Remake). Note that Sheary Warrington's clique ability does something very similar (although I forget what it's called).

 

Also, don't forget that since you get 1/2 of your familiar's skills, Familiar Training can actually give you a 1 or 2 point boost to a skill of your choice, very helpful if you are really close.

 

And to emphasize what people have already said, locations can be a huge factor, especially combined with a stat boosting spell or ability, you can get +10 or even more to a skill for a short period of time.

 

Finally, don't neglect phemes, there are tons of phemes in this game that give skill bonuses, and adding them to random spells can give you that 2-3 point bonus you are missing.

[89157Z]

Cleanse and Remake will stack on itself. Will Creative Approach also stack on itself? Can you get yourself to best-of-three rerolls?

 

Phemes never seemed to last very long. What's the duration of an extra pheme added to a spell?

[Legate of Mineta]

89157Z;

 

Creative Approach will stack, but it works slightly different- your first set of rolls will choose the best, and then another will be rolled and compared, ad infinitum.

 

Phemes last as long as their (unmodified) parent Spell.

[Schwarzbart]

But when like From Nothing Knowledge or Reverse Engineer the Spell effect is permanent how will Phemes handled here?

(I remember that one of the 2 haved some strange effect in a earlyer Patch, the Phemes hold as long you didnt reload but when you reload even the day after you cast the spell they were gone)

[Legate of Mineta]

Both of those actually have a Duration (although their Effects may be permanent.) The Pheme is bound to the Duration of the Spell, in that case.