Yep. No clear idea how, or what I could have done more effectively.
I am/was on the last part of Chapter 2, went after a likely source of infection, went back home to deal with a sudden emergency [actually I didn't do that the first time, tried to do this sequence the other way around, and my kingdom was destroyed, but that actually made sense], then set out after the real source.
I even skipped resting, clearing fatigue with the lay-on-hands mercy.
Except... after numerous fights, I'm tapped, out of resources and half my party is quite poisoned (because wow, poison in this place, and some of these monsters are just ridiculous, even on normal's 'slightly weaker' aka actual pathfinder stats). But if I rest, my kingdom is destroyed because... reasons? I'm honestly not sure why, the game's lack of feedback and explanation is really very frustrating here.
The kicker is... I have to rest to progress. A thing needs to happen to put in another thing to get the poison to kill the threat. [Nothing actually explains that, by the by]. But that ends the game for me.
The kicker is, looking at my saves:
I've got one in my throne room, on the 8th of Pharast, 4711.
The next, is at the [redacted] fort, on the 9th of Pharast.
I don't have any saves for the second stage at home, but presumably that happened on the 9th/10th of Pharast. [And I tried not doing this bit, but that ended up in a fail state for reasons that seem more sensible. As in, my capital was depopulated/eaten in my absence]
I'm currently... in the final bit in the [], and it's the 11th of Pharast in my quicksaves.
Given the travel times involved... I honestly don't know how I could have done this without getting a fail state on the obligatory rest.
But apparently there is some sort of timer. And either I completely messed things up at the beginning of the chapter with the trolls (where I let quite a bit of time pass to get improvements done, the ones where you have to let your character AND an advisor spend two weeks spinning). Or just the final bit has a timer, but it's somewhere between 48-72 hours, and you've got three maps to clear plus some long travel times.
I'm not entirely convinced its doable, and a lot of these fights were just absurd and not particularly fun, especially in the final area. There are a lot of monsters, and the vast majority have poison, some with absurdly high DCs.
So... yeah. Have some griping. The biggest part is the lack of feedback and information. The game simply doesn't tell you things, particularly the kingdom parts. And while most of the timers haven't bothered me, an invisible one that can fail you on a rest you must take (for reasons that aren't clear, both why this part has a timer and why you must rest) is immensely frustrating.
A fair few. But...I'm not clear on what went wrong where, and I had little desire to play through these end parts again.
In any case... I tried a little save scumming this morning. And as far as I can tell it's working as intended. What actually seems to be triggering the destruction is my general failing an event which finishes during my rest. When I flip the kingdom management to auto, the game doesn't end.
Thing is, I didn't fail many kingdom events I failed some, because they're d20 rolls, so they're statistically likely to fail.
The big thing that happened was the Ancient Curse (part 2) popped two weeks earlier than I expected it to, and I had no advisors available to deal with it. So creatures attacked 4 or 5 times while I waited for someone to come back.
So, yeah. At least I can keep playing with this character without going way way back and save scumming each kingdom event (which seems to be the only path to not falling into a death spiral). Though I'll see if I can pass that last triggering check on easy (after 20 tries on normal I gave up)
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Weird, I had troll trouble until Kuthona and never had any game ending event ._. I think it'd be nice if game told you how you can lose kingdom building phase so I know if its matter of random event or stats lowering low enough or what
But yeah, hopefully it isn't a bug? It'd suck if you lose the game due to a bug
Weird, I had troll trouble until Kuthona and never had any game ending event ._. I think it'd be nice if game told you how you can lose kingdom building phase so I know if its matter of random event or stats lowering low enough or what
Well, see stats aren't a problem. My primary stuff was (I've shifted to automatic to progress) all tier II and III (and the verge of 4 in one case, just needed the two week improvement), and I'd even unlocked a secondary. But the status in the upper left hand corner had gone down. I had thought that was a function of the quest events for the Season of [B...], but apparently not. Because, yeah, the game it terrible at telling you things.
Not sure if it was the week's worth of damage I took from the curse event popping while all my advisors were tied up. (Curse part 1 popped about a week before the failure timer ended, when I tied up my advisors I had 4 weeks left on Curse part 2... it just popped at 3 weeks left, and I had no way of knowing that)
So I don't know if it was the several bouts of damage from the Curse event or some arbitrary threshold of failed event cards that ticked down my overall status. But it didn't feel like something I had control over to win or lose.
But yeah, hopefully it isn't a bug? It'd suck if you lose the game due to a bug
Sadly I don't think so. I just didn't have enough information about how things worked. And maybe should have save scummed a couple success/fail event cards.
Sadly I don't think so. I just didn't have enough information about how things worked. And maybe should have save scummed a couple success/fail event cards.
I saw someone on the Owlcat forums say that your kingdom goes from Stable to Troubled, Worried, Crumbling, Destroyed when you critically fail an event card. (Devastating or whatever its called.) I failed two early on and my kingdom is in the Worried category even though all the stats seem fine. I have an event to throw a feast for 1000BP (!) that seems like it might fix things? I'm thinking about doing some save editing to cheat that money into my kingdom, because I don't want to lose the game because of a couple bad die rolls.
Do they give you instructions on kingdom building in game?
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Now that I switched to automatic kingdom building, I can no longer view the kingdom stats with the Kingdom button in the bottom right. However, I am still informed that my barony keeps taking stat damage due to the curse. Hidden in the journal, there's a task about «issuing an urgent decree» to stop that...? But how am I supposed to do that? Isn't that a kingdom building problem? Should I just ignore it?
It seems that when an event says "Should be attended before [xxx]," that means you need to START it before the date listed, not FINISH it. As long as it's started before it expires, it doesn't disappear and penalize you. I was letting some events pass by because I didn't think I had enough time to complete them. Argh!
Do they give you instructions on kingdom building in game?
Not many. But there aren't many real choices to make either. Click cards, click one of the maybe two advisors who can do it, start event.
The big choice is spending Build Points on projects or buildings and realize you will never, ever have enough. Even if you dump 20,000 gold on the vendor to buy more.
Town Tetris is slightly interesting, but the locations of towns don't seem to matter, and the layout and buildings don't have any in game effect. (If you build a bunch of shops in your capital you don't get new merchants with different inventories, for example). It's purely building kingdom stats so you can be forced to skip 2 weeks with advisors to slightly decrease failure chances.
Honestly, I had to switch to Auto to avoid the game failure state, and its improved the game a fair bit. Adventuring and combat is much more fun. Mostly, anyway: the ridiculously high bonuses on monsters are sucking some of the joy out of it. Greater Cyclops Dread Zombies cleaving on my entire front line at +28 for 40+ damage each isn't exactly reasonable or fun.
Though getting them to line up in choke points to stand in Blade Barrier is.
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I was hoping to get rid of the whole events and advisors stuff by going full auto on the kingdom building, but I guess I still have to return to the capital every now and then to allow for the auto-governance to take place...?
I like how clicking on your capital allows you to choose where in the town you end up. I wish there were a similar mechanic for exiting the town; as it is, I have to walk for minutes to reach the area exit.