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KickStarter ATOM RPG - Wasteland Soviet style! - now with Dead City update

Will you back?

  • I will consider it!

    Votes: 39 54.9%
  • No! I would never!..

    Votes: 9 12.7%
  • kingcomrade

    Votes: 23 32.4%

  • Total voters
    71
  • Poll closed .

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
13-15?

I am already 18 and I did not even visit Dead City. Finished most of the sidequests on the first two global maps, only have main story quests to do now.

Granted, I play a very intelligent character with lots of experience/skill points increasing perks, but still...
I ignored quite a few quests and was almost level 18 during endgame too.
 

Saduj

Arcane
Joined
Aug 26, 2012
Messages
2,547
Came back from vacation and was pleasantly surprised by the addition of Steam cards. That's a cool $0.17 credited to my account. They sold fast too.
 

Sykar

Arcane
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
Messages
11,297
Location
Turn right after Alpha Centauri
I cracked that safe too but couldn't loot it without triggering combat.
Very strange. Same thing with the Krasno ship gang's storage.
Gun store owner didn't really notice me looting his lockers tho.
Maybe needs more points into sneaking.

I think after 20+ runs I gotta ask the dev this question again:

Do you guys think having 0 defensive skill in this game is OK?
I understand following Fallout 1 & 2 skill sets but I feel having access to ZERO defense but SIX weapon skills is a strange decision to make when designing the game.
I don't think you should lock all the defensive options behind abilities unlock (perks) but that seems to be the case in this game.

Here is what's locked behind your ability progression:
- Additional Dodge
- Shield use
- Damage Resistance
- Knockdown Resistance
- Even more HP

Compare to the weapon users who get to hit near 100+ skill value at level 3. That's a big difference.
not only did these guys subsidize our dream game, they even gave us a year of okay life for it!

I ould also subsidize cheap latvian whores for you if I get more of your stuff. Please make me a sword and sorcery game

Do you guys think having 0 defensive skill in this game is OK?
I understand following Fallout 1 & 2 skill sets but I feel having access to ZERO defense but SIX weapon skills is a strange decision to make when designing the game.
I don't think you should lock all the defensive options behind abilities unlock (perks) but that seems to be the case in this game.

Here is what's locked behind your ability progression:
- Additional Dodge
- Shield use
- Damage Resistance
- Knockdown Resistance
- Even more HP

Compare to the weapon users who get to hit near 100+ skill value at level 3. That's a big difference.

Second that. Combat feels like standing there and shooting back but I am not really able to do anythign tactical to avoid damage. Theres also the usual damage spread, for example I can hit someone in the eye for about 40 damage, I can also one shot him with a 340 crit. If damage is the roll of a die weaponskill doesnt feel like giving me better die but just reducing the chance of me breaking my arm while trying to roll it. skills to make less but more reliable damage would be great.

In general I would like future games less save scum encouraging.
Well that's what we get for trying to reproduce Fallout's system. Our def mostly comes from not using all AP and wearing good armor, and from HP if we can even count that, well and perks like you mentioned. The idea of making shadowrun-esque combat with cover was always floating there, as was an idea of a def skill and critical skill, some moves were even made in that direction, but it just didn't look natural. The primitive combat like in fallout with rudimentary cover (like, using half of your AP to shoot and half to walk behind a tree) looked the best. However, I can sure promise that in future installments, we will try to make dodge less useless and rewrite def and dam formulas.

You could add stances to combat, crouching and laying down, giving different types of bonus. You could also consider that running could add defense while reducing your own accuracy, might be very helpful for melee builds rushing into combat. Speaking of rushing, there could be some extra options baseline for melees, like disarming opponent for example.

Ultimately the biggest problems arise because certain elements present in real life are not present in cRPGs. Pistols are inferior to other firearms because things like concealment, environments and situations where you are prohibited to use heavy firearms, or any firearms, no weapon degradation means it becomes sooner or later easy to keep your weapons and armors up with no problem, etc. Pistols are also less taxing for prolonged combat in terms of endurance. Adding silencers and some quests/situations where stealth killing is preferable might also give pistols further advantages.
My biggest gripe is how many many perks are locked into certain paths. It would have been better to have some basic perks which are not locked behind others and instead of having ever increasing costs you have fixed perk costs depending on its power only. This would open up builds a lot more and people might be willing to give survival and medical perks at least a glance as a sort of complimentary perk. As it stands, due to the ridiculous costs of perks later will always lead to people going for either the defensive perks or offensive perks, hardly anything else.
 

Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
Messages
9,835
Location
Free City of Warsaw
In my playthrough I went for brainiac percs and have to say they are great. I'm awashed with skillpoints (due to additional points at levelup, additional points from books and additional 20% experience, hence more levels).

The rest I invested into pistols/smgs percs because my heroine is too weak to wield heavier assault rifles (and the perk to ignore the str requirements is on the very end of the tree). So, Scorpion smg it is. Not a bad damage output. So I will propably max out two perk trees and maybe start a third one, but it is unlikely.

I also placed 100 skillpoints into assault rifles and (will put) another 100 into throwing weapons to use vintorez and grenades in the endgame. I have no better use for those points, I already have 160 speech (those sweet books from Abraham), 120 pistols/smgs, 100 barter, lockpick, technology and 70s in survival, stealth and tinkering. That's the power of the brainiac build, unparreled by anything I've seen in Fallouts.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
Don't see any point in this. You only need 1 weapon skill, and rest is easy to level up. I had 8 INT and in the endgame passed every check that mattered. Lockpicks and toolkit are +20 to lockpick and tech and you don't need more than 100.

That's the power of the brainiac build, unparreled by anything I've seen in Fallouts.
No idea what you mean here. You could have most skills at 100+ in Fallout. Relevant anyways. In New Vegas - even non-relevant. And it had more skills I think.
 
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Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
Messages
9,835
Location
Free City of Warsaw
In Fallout 1 level cap was 21. So it was impossible to raise all skills (or even all the relevant ones) to 100. Ofcourse, if you grinded long enough, you could get most skills to 100 in Fallout 2 - level cap was 99. But it required lots of work. In Atom I just play the game.

Besides, skills in Fallout 1&2, above 100 costed 2 skillpoints, which limited advancing beyond this level. In Atom they still cost 1. In Fallouts books only gave a handful of skillpoints, here I used to get dozens of them from reading.

In the end in Fallout 2 I maxed out the skills I really needed and left some (also useful) underdevelopped. In Atom I maxed out almost everything of what I barely need.

And it's true, now that I remember it, Fallout: New Vegas was quite generous, especially with the four expansions.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
Fallout 1 had basically infinite skill books. And level 20 is very respectable, you can have many 100s with this.

Fallout 2 had more skill checks but also more ways of leveling.

In Fallouts books only gave a handful of skillpoints
Err, no. They gave skill points dependant on your current skill level. Formula also was dependant on your INT I think and of course reading perk. In that regard they gave massively more sp than you get from books in Atom.

Most of extra skills in Atom are flavour or they break economy even more. I think the only one you really might want to level to like 200 is Steal.
 
Last edited:

Sykar

Arcane
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
Messages
11,297
Location
Turn right after Alpha Centauri
Holy crap, I was browsing the wiki to check about weapon strength requirements for rifles and thought that the VVE looks rather strange, looked around a little on the net since in hopes that the rifle was inspired by real life and found this:



12.7 mm with suppression so good you can fire it indoors and enough power to punch through walls, no visible muzzle flash either. Damn those Ruskies make scary weapons!

In Fallout 1 level cap was 21. So it was impossible to raise all skills (or even all the relevant ones) to 100. Ofcourse, if you grinded long enough, you could get most skills to 100 in Fallout 2 - level cap was 99. But it required lots of work. In Atom I just play the game.

Besides, skills in Fallout 1&2, above 100 costed 2 skillpoints, which limited advancing beyond this level. In Atom they still cost 1. In Fallouts books only gave a handful of skillpoints, here I used to get dozens of them from reading.

In the end in Fallout 2 I maxed out the skills I really needed and left some (also useful) underdevelopped. In Atom I maxed out almost everything of what I barely need.

And it's true, now that I remember it, Fallout: New Vegas was quite generous, especially with the four expansions.

Yeah considering how much the game borrowed from the original FOs why Atomboy did not opt to increase skill point costs past 100 is beyond me.
 

Sykar

Arcane
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
Messages
11,297
Location
Turn right after Alpha Centauri
I just hit level 6 and have to decide between Manhunter and Witcher. I only have two crafted non-scopred rifles at the moment so I am leaning towards Witcher. Does anyone know if the damage bonus applies to all damage, just rifles or just aimed shots or something else?
 

flushfire

Augur
Joined
Jun 10, 2006
Messages
771
Witcher is kind of a waste. Monsters aren't really a threat except if fought really earlier than they were meant to be taken on.
 

Shadenuat

Arcane
Joined
Dec 9, 2011
Messages
11,955
Location
Russia
It cuts on the grind massively especially in Dead City later if you want to exlore whole of it, which is enough of a reason to take it.
 

D!!

Educated
Joined
May 24, 2016
Messages
80
Location
Belarus
I'd say Manhunter because of the ridiculously hard endgame fight. But maybe it was patched already.
 

Sykar

Arcane
Joined
Dec 2, 2014
Messages
11,297
Location
Turn right after Alpha Centauri
I'd say Manhunter because of the ridiculously hard endgame fight. But maybe it was patched already.

I am level 6 playing on normal so the decision right now is between Witcher and Manhunter at level 6, taking the other at 9. Also I do not even have a scoped rifle yet so I might not even get the bonus to crit damage.
I am not sure I am even tempted to try Expert or higher since the perk point buy system is so terribly restrictive to begin with. Even on normal you can barely fill out your weapon perks which makes supplementary perks like Gobseck completely unattractive. In that regard FO 1/2 and NV were superior to ATOM rpg.
 

Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
Messages
9,835
Location
Free City of Warsaw
I'd say Manhunter because of the ridiculously hard endgame fight. But maybe it was patched already.

I am level 6 playing on normal so the decision right now is between Witcher and Manhunter at level 6, taking the other at 9. Also I do not even have a scoped rifle yet so I might not even get the bonus to crit damage.
I am not sure I am even tempted to try Expert or higher since the perk point buy system is so terribly restrictive to begin with. Even on normal you can barely fill out your weapon perks which makes supplementary perks like Gobseck completely unattractive. In that regard FO 1/2 and NV were superior to ATOM rpg.

From my experience combat in early parts of Atom is quite easy (or easily avoided). Difficult battles with heavy hitting opponents come in the endgame.

So first I maxed out noncombat perks, that gave me tons of additional exp and skillpoints. With them playing the game, which for the most parts consists of talking, exploring and passing skillchecks became pretty easy (no locked doors or difficult negotiator could stop my progress).

In combat your weapon and allies carry you more than the weapon perks. I only invested in them in the middle and late part of the game (just recently maxed out pistols/smgs tree at level 19). And now they are really useful.
 

Atomboy

Atom Team
Developer
Joined
Oct 1, 2016
Messages
709
Thank God it's not Lini!

What level can I expect to reach roughly if I do all possible side quests but no extensive farming?
A very, very important question! The diversity of answers given frightens me...

Comrade Sykar finally bought the game. Will there be much Cheeki Breeki on the long road ahead to the next vodka bottle?
Thank you!

Well, one thing I agree with is the fact that the conversations are overwhelmingly generic. Atomboy commented somewhere that there was a reason why all interactions follow exactly the same pattern: "work", "how's life", "talk about yourself", "rumors"; and that's it. Sometimes a new option or two depending on some quest or context. I do understand the logic of "why I could ask this question to certain people and not to others" (that ended up leading to this), but the final effect really didn't turn out to be very organic, precisely because the characters end up stuck to that same basic skeleton of interaction. I think I liked the motivation behind their existence more than the final outcome, I guess.
Yeah I like the NPC dialogues in this game but they start to feel generic after a while because every NPC gets the exact same dialogue options (Name, Job, Rumors) so it feels like you're just going through the motions instead of interacting with individuals.
Yeah, that's an unfortunate side-effect of the system we created :\ Ultima 7 mentioned in the thread was one of the main inspirations for the system, but with five-option dialogues like ours it might seem less diverse. It will be much more dynamic in Trudograd, but won't change at the core.

You played Atom a lot, dude! Was there really an NPC who did not do anything and was just there to push some kind of a narrative which we barely even have?? I don't think the game is liked DESPITE these things. These things make this RPG rich and serve to deepen the immersion of those who choose to interact with it. I agree that the game should not deceive the player who thinks talking to non-quest-givers is a waste of time, but apart from that, I don't see a problem or anything that insults the classic RPG conventions.
Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that NPCs packed with lore that are non-quest-givers are a part of the canon, which would establish them as a convention of the genre. Is this a good convention to have or it should be abandoned for something different? You talk as if all NPCs dialogues would lead to some quest or another down the line. This is not the case. What is worse. Since the player is bombarded by information which is there just to enrich the gameworld, it becomes a masochist hobby trying to figure it out what would lead to what down the road. It is easy to dismiss an important piece of information because it is indistinguishable from just another NPC personal story. Thus, this just reinforces my point: in a game where bits of information can lead to unexpected events, NPCs that don’t provide new content will only make things more confusing.
But that's also optional. Say some NPC has a rumor about the brain worm quest. Knowing this rumor does not lead you to stumbling upon that said quest. It just prepares you for it by presenting it as a rumor before you stumble upon it. Most of the quest givers are pretty obvious and will be made even more obvious in future games, so the flavor, lore and rumor NPCs though not useless for the reasons of world building can be ignored wholeheartedly with a tiny loss of a few XP that you'll get by passing certain checks they might or might not have.

I agree. Ultima 7 sucks.
If I remember right in Ultima 7 they didn't just tell you about their job, they actually did their job.
Ours do too! A guard stands there with a gun, a pensioneer has beet in his inventory. All good!
Came back from vacation and was pleasantly surprised by the addition of Steam cards. That's a cool $0.17 credited to my account. They sold fast too.
I have no clue what they are or what they do or what they are for, but I'm glad you liked them! A guy on the team likes this thing too, so he decided to add it.

I cracked that safe too but couldn't loot it without triggering combat.
Very strange. Same thing with the Krasno ship gang's storage.
Gun store owner didn't really notice me looting his lockers tho.
Maybe needs more points into sneaking.

I think after 20+ runs I gotta ask the dev this question again:

Do you guys think having 0 defensive skill in this game is OK?
I understand following Fallout 1 & 2 skill sets but I feel having access to ZERO defense but SIX weapon skills is a strange decision to make when designing the game.
I don't think you should lock all the defensive options behind abilities unlock (perks) but that seems to be the case in this game.

Here is what's locked behind your ability progression:
- Additional Dodge
- Shield use
- Damage Resistance
- Knockdown Resistance
- Even more HP

Compare to the weapon users who get to hit near 100+ skill value at level 3. That's a big difference.
not only did these guys subsidize our dream game, they even gave us a year of okay life for it!

I ould also subsidize cheap latvian whores for you if I get more of your stuff. Please make me a sword and sorcery game

Do you guys think having 0 defensive skill in this game is OK?
I understand following Fallout 1 & 2 skill sets but I feel having access to ZERO defense but SIX weapon skills is a strange decision to make when designing the game.
I don't think you should lock all the defensive options behind abilities unlock (perks) but that seems to be the case in this game.

Here is what's locked behind your ability progression:
- Additional Dodge
- Shield use
- Damage Resistance
- Knockdown Resistance
- Even more HP

Compare to the weapon users who get to hit near 100+ skill value at level 3. That's a big difference.

Second that. Combat feels like standing there and shooting back but I am not really able to do anythign tactical to avoid damage. Theres also the usual damage spread, for example I can hit someone in the eye for about 40 damage, I can also one shot him with a 340 crit. If damage is the roll of a die weaponskill doesnt feel like giving me better die but just reducing the chance of me breaking my arm while trying to roll it. skills to make less but more reliable damage would be great.

In general I would like future games less save scum encouraging.
Well that's what we get for trying to reproduce Fallout's system. Our def mostly comes from not using all AP and wearing good armor, and from HP if we can even count that, well and perks like you mentioned. The idea of making shadowrun-esque combat with cover was always floating there, as was an idea of a def skill and critical skill, some moves were even made in that direction, but it just didn't look natural. The primitive combat like in fallout with rudimentary cover (like, using half of your AP to shoot and half to walk behind a tree) looked the best. However, I can sure promise that in future installments, we will try to make dodge less useless and rewrite def and dam formulas.

You could add stances to combat, crouching and laying down, giving different types of bonus. You could also consider that running could add defense while reducing your own accuracy, might be very helpful for melee builds rushing into combat. Speaking of rushing, there could be some extra options baseline for melees, like disarming opponent for example.

Ultimately the biggest problems arise because certain elements present in real life are not present in cRPGs. Pistols are inferior to other firearms because things like concealment, environments and situations where you are prohibited to use heavy firearms, or any firearms, no weapon degradation means it becomes sooner or later easy to keep your weapons and armors up with no problem, etc. Pistols are also less taxing for prolonged combat in terms of endurance. Adding silencers and some quests/situations where stealth killing is preferable might also give pistols further advantages.
My biggest gripe is how many many perks are locked into certain paths. It would have been better to have some basic perks which are not locked behind others and instead of having ever increasing costs you have fixed perk costs depending on its power only. This would open up builds a lot more and people might be willing to give survival and medical perks at least a glance as a sort of complimentary perk. As it stands, due to the ridiculous costs of perks later will always lead to people going for either the defensive perks or offensive perks, hardly anything else.

Having conceal carry only places is a pretty hard idea to implement, but we like it a lot, and tried to make several quests for it. Maybe in Trudograd we'll finally figure it out!
Currently, the pistol's advantages are certain low AP high damage craft pistols and one super powerful one.
As for more strategic combat - we don't want to make the battles too intricate, since that would push the current main strong side of Atom - quests and exploration - to battles, and we'll all just skip dialogue and speedrun to get into another kewl battle like I did in Shadowrun. Seriously, this might sound retarded, but I don't know the plot to any games with cool combat, from Silent Storm to all three Shadowruns I own, because I just rushed into the next battle because they were so sweet :| I bet Shadowrun had amazing dialogues and plot, but I was just "god damn it stop making me click boring shit, I wanna use my shiny new shotgun already!" I don't want this fate for Atom!
However, that said, in Trudograd we'll try to apply verticality and more cover options to Atom. Not Shadowrun level cover, but things you can walk beside after taking a shot. The perk that gives extra movement to a melee character was designed by me like a year ago, however since we decided to use the god damn tree, it broke a lot of things so it's not there in it's full glory. The tree was asked for by certain Early Access players and backers, so we decided to give it to them, but Jesus Christ, am I regretting this... Though to be honest, pro-tree arguments I hear from players and team members are pretty cool too and the tree is more or less balanced right now. I might be dendrophobic.

Holy crap, I was browsing the wiki to check about weapon strength requirements for rifles and thought that the VVE looks rather strange, looked around a little on the net since in hopes that the rifle was inspired by real life and found this:



12.7 mm with suppression so good you can fire it indoors and enough power to punch through walls, no visible muzzle flash either. Damn those Ruskies make scary weapons!

In Fallout 1 level cap was 21. So it was impossible to raise all skills (or even all the relevant ones) to 100. Ofcourse, if you grinded long enough, you could get most skills to 100 in Fallout 2 - level cap was 99. But it required lots of work. In Atom I just play the game.

Besides, skills in Fallout 1&2, above 100 costed 2 skillpoints, which limited advancing beyond this level. In Atom they still cost 1. In Fallouts books only gave a handful of skillpoints, here I used to get dozens of them from reading.

In the end in Fallout 2 I maxed out the skills I really needed and left some (also useful) underdevelopped. In Atom I maxed out almost everything of what I barely need.

And it's true, now that I remember it, Fallout: New Vegas was quite generous, especially with the four expansions.

Yeah considering how much the game borrowed from the original FOs why Atomboy did not opt to increase skill point costs past 100 is beyond me.

Yeah, this thing is pretty awesome. If we had cool gun laws like Alabama, I'd buy two and dual wield them against beer cans all day long. The reasons for not making skills cost more after 100 is first of all because certain skill checks ask for 140 and even more in a skill so everyone would just fail, and the second reason is well... We didn't like the cost increase in F1 :((( It pissed me off! A bit.


==========================================================================

==========================================================================

==========================================================================

In other news, we're finally finishing the first location of Trudograd. It's gonna be pretty cool! You'll have a hotel, a special fun and cool dungeon, a parking lot, an alcoholic, beet, maybe not all things will even be on a flat level and things like stairs and hills will actually be a thing now. Cool, huh? I'll share screenshots and stuff when it's ready. We're also still thinking on how to make the game fun for both the people who transfer a 14 lvl char and a 43 level char into Trudograd. We have several ideas - a slightly reworked (with yer help) multiclass option and scaling of XP for several starting quests, but the latter is a pretty shady idea, so we'll probably scrap it. Also, the favorite monster of many, the one, the only, the mighty gelatinous cube just might finally make it's way into this Atom game. Why it wasn't in the first one is beyond me, but now we almost decided to put it in. Gelatinous cubes are the best, and they will actually have cohesive in-game lore and won't act like your standard gelatinous cube most probably. While smaller, and set in a large city and few border villages, Trudograd just might turn out to be a very fun a memorable game (or bomb terribly and ruin us), since we'll try to use everything we learned with Atom in it. Since this is an Add-on, we won't get rid of the tree, but some fresh ideas will even touch this section of the game. That's about it for now I think.

How do you guys feel about mini-games inside RPG games? And does Atom really need romance with sidekicks? Just asking. There's no reason behind the question.
 

Cromwell

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2013
Messages
5,443
How do you guys feel about mini-games inside RPG games? And does Atom really need romance with sidekicks? Just asking. There's no reason behind the question.

Minigames can be cool if you dont force me to do it i.e. no fucking minigames for hacking or lockpick because I have stats for that. Playing games with npcs for money or loot can be cool. Romances are not needed but I dont have anything against them (part of me wished you could settle down at the end of atom with Katya).
 

zapotec

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 7, 2018
Messages
1,495
The third shadow run was bloated with dialogue, skipping to the combat was the only sane thing to do
 

Atomboy

Atom Team
Developer
Joined
Oct 1, 2016
Messages
709
How do you guys feel about mini-games inside RPG games? And does Atom really need romance with sidekicks? Just asking. There's no reason behind the question.

Minigames can be cool if you dont force me to do it i.e. no fucking minigames for hacking or lockpick because I have stats for that. Playing games with npcs for money or loot can be cool. Romances are not needed but I dont have anything against them (part of me wished you could settle down at the end of atom with Katya).
Everyone but Katya's writer thought that to be a great idea. He's blueballing a hefty chunk of players. At least let us have sexy times with her, geeez! Yeah, I meant like a silly card game you can play with some people by pushing a special UI button in the dialogue screen if you wanna. Lockpicking minigames blow :|
The third shadow run was bloated with dialogue, skipping to the combat was the only sane thing to do
The fact that you had to chat with every single person after each mission to romance them into advancing their skills and such made me wanna kill myself. Glad I'm not the only skipper here!!
minigames should be fun and infrequent. The problem with shit like lockpicking minigames is that it's typically neither.
Very true!

===================================================================================================

===================================================================================================

===================================================================================================
Also, I was thinking about what can I show yall from Trudograd that's more or less complete, and I found this leaflet available very early in game. Although the author of it terribly exaggerates the social climate of the city, it displays the main cultural and social conflict as well as the architectural principles and flood \ smog problem of the game and lore rather clearly. Here it is!
To all those whom it may concern...

Saved from the atomic blaze by the illustrious grace of merciful fate, and the might of Soviet weaponry, Trudograd lived on... And gloriously so! It is now a provincial Babylon, that challenges the sky itself, by growing not in width, but in height with it's shanty towns and fabulous districts built upon the cold, tin plated flat roofs of it's mass-produced, utilitarian apartment buildings. Hidden behind it's pre-war walls, fortified with sand and steel, protected by it's mighty guardians, and saved in most part from the yearly rages of river floods that came with the bombs falling far beyond the horizon, Trudograd decisively survives through what was thought to be the end days...

But in it's growth and strength, Trudograd forgot of the terrible ailment, caused by it's own prosperity. It forgot about the terrible, cannibalistic, disgusting mold, which originated in the barren and hostile Northern lands, and quickly flooded this amazing city's poorest and dampest corners.

There is no need to lie to ourselves, for we all heard the furtive whispers of those unfortunate enough to be Trudograd's locals but still live on the smog filled, damnable ground levels of the glorious spire-city... Whispers that tell of loathsome flats occupied by whole packs of the watery eyed, disturbingly fair-haired and milky-skinned mongrel migrants from the abominable North. Rumors of the terrible, ungodly, heretical rituals that go on at times when the stars are right, in their unclean, disease-ridden kitchens and stairwells, gifted to them out of pity by our vacuous city authorities.

How naive our elected officials were, when they decided to let these ragged, uneducated savages into our midst! Did they not know, that their beliefs and traditions will come with them as well? Now, Trudograd is home for all manner of vile heresy, from the secretive love-slaves of Krishtapas, the many-handed giant, whose slimy offerings make even the most pious of people curse the name of the Lord; to the unholy Witnesses of the sand and death demon Tsathoggua; and surely the unspeakable followers of the Black Goat of the Woods, a terrible, churning flesh-tree that births monstrosities in pale moonlight.

Stay vigilant, fellow locals! For the enemy is among us, spreading it's ungodly culture and wishing our pure blood to flow on it's decrepit altars!

- Concerned citizen
 

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