KickStarter Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones - a Lovecraftian Computer RPG

[vota DC]

Wait presence dump stat then if I can use psychology in place of speechcraft for everything except discounts? I mean presence use mind that reduce mental damage which is great.

I think occult is the most powerful skill in the game. It's at the same time a combat skill, governing spell damage, a rest skill, allowing to research artifacts, and has a ton of dialog and environmental uses (plus non-combat spells). Coupled with high will, which gives you both a ton of sanity and a high mental resistance, you're just turning into a juggernaut with zero need for drugs or other consumables.

But occult doesn't reduce your sanity? Anyway will helps using drugs because less risk to addiction, mind seems better because less mental damage.
How much to invest if you want only dialogue and environmental? I mean you have already outsider for both medicine and occultism.

 

[Stakhanov]

Wait presence dump stat then if I can use psychology in place of speechcraft for everything except discounts? I mean presence use mind that reduce mental damage which is great.

I think occult is the most powerful skill in the game. It's at the same time a combat skill, governing spell damage, a rest skill, allowing to research artifacts, and has a ton of dialog and environmental uses (plus non-combat spells). Coupled with high will, which gives you both a ton of sanity and a high mental resistance, you're just turning into a juggernaut with zero need for drugs or other consumables.

But occult doesn't reduce your sanity? Anyway will helps using drugs because less risk to addiction, mind seems better because less mental damage.
How much to invest if you want only dialogue and environmental? I mean you have already outsider for both medicine and occultism.

With spells, you want to use them a little bit sparingly, but between all the booze and cigars, as well as the drugs you can craft, maintaining sanity is not a huge issue. There isn't much forced combat in the game. Also, outside of combat, occult skill checks don't cost sanity and can be an "I win" button allowing you to avoid fights. A minimal combat build would be subterfuge + occult.

If you aren't using speechcraft then presence is pretty much always a dump stat. It doesn't impact anything else besides merchant prices by a few percent.

 

[V_K]

Wait presence dump stat then if I can use psychology in place of speechcraft for everything except discounts? I mean presence use mind that reduce mental damage which is great.

I think occult is the most powerful skill in the game. It's at the same time a combat skill, governing spell damage, a rest skill, allowing to research artifacts, and has a ton of dialog and environmental uses (plus non-combat spells). Coupled with high will, which gives you both a ton of sanity and a high mental resistance, you're just turning into a juggernaut with zero need for drugs or other consumables.

But occult doesn't reduce your sanity? Anyway will helps using drugs because less risk to addiction, mind seems better because less mental damage.

Occult on its own doesn't reduce anything. Spells use up sanity, but with high will you have a high enough reserve not to worry about it. My build is 9 will, 9 mind, so my MC's max sanity is close to 100. I rest-spam whenever it gets into 80s-70s since you need that anyway to research new manuscripts for spells, and between reading and natural regeneration I get back around 15 points per rest. So far (I'm at the end of the Blasted street ATM) the only time my MC's sanity dropped anywhere near 50% was at the end of the Warehouse.

 

[bertram_tung]

So, no workaround for the bug where Mr. Wheat doesn't give you the poison?

Otherwise my game is at a dead end..

 

[Fowyr]

Where do I find food in this shit? This way I'm gonna starve before getting insane. Not lovecraftian at all!

Buy some, as others said. With survival 2 you can craft 3 cans of mystery meat from the piece of tainted meat and pack of salt.

 

[RK47]

The font size of this game is way too damn small man.
Why isn't there an option to increase it?

 

[Rahdulan]

How do I get into room 303? (the one with Carrion Jack, or something).

Beat him in a drinking contest with a survival check and Copperhead Whiskey
or
shoot the motherfucker and also a dozen other motherfuckers that burst into the room

Important to note: bring your own whiskey or he won't drink with you. I think you also get one shot at this otherwise you have to resort to fighting when you talk to him again. Which you can still get through by dashing past him, looting the container and retreating to escape tiles. Carrion Jack has a nice gun if you take him out, though.

 

[V_K]

How do I get into room 303? (the one with Carrion Jack, or something).

Beat him in a drinking contest with a survival check and Copperhead Whiskey
or
shoot the motherfucker and also a dozen other motherfuckers that burst into the room

Important to note: bring your own whiskey or he won't drink with you. I think you also get one shot at this otherwise you have to resort to fighting when you talk to him again. Which you can still get through by dashing past him, looting the container and retreating to escape tiles. Carrion Jack has a nice gun if you take him out, though.

There's also a third way to deal with him next door if you have occult.

 

[Van-d-all]

I haven't really noticed much use at all for sex appeal, presence, or speechcraft compared to other options. I think you might be able to get hookers for free? But otherwise it's an underdeveloped part of the game.

I ran with high speechcraft through the entirety of the game and felt like I had a ton of [Speechcraft] options popping up all over the place, many of which seemed to very nicely change the outcome of the situation in my favor.

I did several builds, and speechcraft is by far the most used skill. Followed by psychology, occult, science & medicine in order. However you need a total score of 10+ for those dialogue options to even be present.

Note: I mean dialogues, Occult has other uses like casting spells or triggering environment, making it almost as useful as speechcraft overall.

 

[HoboForEternity]

How do I get into room 303? (the one with Carrion Jack, or something).

Beat him in a drinking contest with a survival check and Copperhead Whiskey
or
shoot the motherfucker and also a dozen other motherfuckers that burst into the room

Important to note: bring your own whiskey or he won't drink with you. I think you also get one shot at this otherwise you have to resort to fighting when you talk to him again. Which you can still get through by dashing past him, looting the container and retreating to escape tiles. Carrion Jack has a nice gun if you take him out, though.

There's also a third way to deal with him next door if you have occult.

i pretended i was sent by waxface with speechcraft and convinced him the betsy is still alive. wax face need him to finish his job now or he will get waxed. another solution.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

How do I get into room 303? (the one with Carrion Jack, or something).

Beat him in a drinking contest with a survival check and Copperhead Whiskey
or
shoot the motherfucker and also a dozen other motherfuckers that burst into the room

You can also summon a ghost from the room next door with occultism and send it to haunt Carrion Jack

 

[Van-d-all]

What does the second tooltip action in sleeper fight do? The first is use shovel, then the central 2 hexes change to a rock, but the second icon keeps saying "Criteria not met"...

 

[Stakhanov]

What does the second tooltip action in sleeper fight do? The first is use shovel, then the central 2 hexes change to a rock, but the second icon keeps saying "Criteria not met"...

If you're a science character, you can research one of the anomalous rocks to get the blueprint for a ray gun. It needs electronic parts and some other stuff I can't remember right now. It does a flat 8 damage and runs on batteries. I'm assuming it allows you to attack the Sleeper without digging, but I didn't have the electronic parts on hand until after the fight so I couldn't test it.

 

[V_K]

So while we're discussing solutions to things, what are the ways of getting a cultist hood? I know there's one lying around for sneaky characters to grab, and you have the hesitant cultist that you can talk into giving up his, I assume, through science or speechcraft (I'm not sure if there are occult options there - it made more sense for me to go with science given the NPCs background). Is that it? The reason I'm asking is because in both cases you get the hole set, robe and hood, but I've already found a robe in the hotel, so I thought there should be a way of getting just the hood somewhere?

 

[Andhaira]

How many spells are there in total? Circlce of protect btw is quite strong, at least in the beginning, love it!

Love the spell effects too

Also, any list of initial companion for each profession type?

My trial run as Stacy the Seductive Actress (who dabbles in the occult) had Nameless as a companion, and that guy is pretty strong (his claw attack if built up is quite powerful, at least against the bank zombies, and he has a lot of potential in the occult). I want to start laying an occultist as my main, but not sure if I will get a companion that will complement his weaknesses. It would suck to get Nameless as a companion for an occultist main though

Another thing, is the Esoteric personality type worth it? It seems to fit the occultist profession but I don't want dialogue options to suck.

Finally, is Subterfuge overpowered? With just 1 point you can scavenge in any locked container, while without it you can't and miss out on a lot of stuff (and so you won't make a lot of money too). Will I be penniless without having Subterfuge?

 

[Wunderbar]

Also, any list of initial companion for each profession type?

Outsider, Randolf's wife, spanish henchman, zombie soldier, Aristocrat's butler and Explorer's dawg.

Another thing, is the Esoteric personality type worth it? It seems to fit the occultist profession but I don't want dialogue options to suck.

i've played with esoteric alignment and there are a lot of options to roleplay esoteric weirdo. It's a very beneficial alignment for mages, since it gives you a lot of sanity points.

Finally, is Subterfuge overpowered? With just 1 point you can scavenge in any locked container, while without it you can't and miss out on a lot of stuff (and so you won't make a lot of money too). Will I be penniless without having Subterfuge?

i had 0 in subterfuge and still got enough money.

 

[Jenkem]

anyone play as a woman yet? I wonder what's different

 

[Wunderbar]

anyone play as a woman yet? I wonder what's different

so far no one tried to rape me, and there weren't any seduction options

 

[Prime Junta]

anyone play as a woman yet? I wonder what's different

I tried. It seemed a bit halfbaked. The Old Eel House bartender still called me "Cornuto" which didn't fit, although I could flirt with the Hispanic bodyguard.

 

[V_K]

Finally, is Subterfuge overpowered? With just 1 point you can scavenge in any locked container

So the thing is, the game uses the VTM-style stat+skill checks. So if you have 1 point in Subterfuge and 9 points in Agility, effectively you have 10 points in Subterfuge.
Science works similarly for scavenging machine parts.

How many spells are there in total?

Around 10 I think, plus each spell can be enhanced with a reagent, so around 20 in total.

anyone play as a woman yet? I wonder what's different

You can romance the Outsider. At least I assume he's not into boys, haven't tried a male character yet. Otherwise, I haven't encountered much gender-specific content - although my char is old and has minimal Presence, so not terribly attractive.

 

[Van-d-all]

So the thing is, the game uses the VTM-style stat+skill checks. So if you have 1 point in Subterfuge and 9 points in Agility, effectively you have 10 points in Subterfuge.
Science works similarly for scavenging machine parts.

But you need at least 1 point, to have the skill "unlocked", plus later parts of the game barely have any locks, so even if there is any variance in locked chest difficulty, those are still pretty low.

 

[V_K]

So the thing is, the game uses the VTM-style stat+skill checks. So if you have 1 point in Subterfuge and 9 points in Agility, effectively you have 10 points in Subterfuge.
Science works similarly for scavenging machine parts.

But you need at least 1 point, to have the skill "unlocked", plus later parts of the game barely have any locks, so even if there is any variance in locked chest difficulty, those are still pretty low.

I don't disagree with that. What I'm saying is, I doubt having 1 point in Subterfuge would be as beneficial for my minmaxed occultist with 3 Agility as it would be for a combat-oriented build with 5-7 Agility, for example.

 

[Van-d-all]

How many spells are there in total? Circlce of protect btw is quite strong, at least in the beginning, love it!

Evil Eye - stat debuff
Blood Circle - defence buff
Spit of Al ??? - dmg + AoE dmg when augmented
Tongue Of The Dead - dialogue spell / sanity dmg
Host of Loa - status effect immunity buff
Damnation To Stone - CC stun
Children of Pazuzu - broken...
Gaze of Abyss - stat buff
Nightwalk - subterfuge / immunity buff
Hand of Nergal - dmg

So I'd say 11 (10 with Pazuzu broken), as Spit is the only one with major augment difference between targeted and AoE. Other augments mostly offer numerical boosts to AP/Sanity/dmg.

 

[Van-d-all]

So the thing is, the game uses the VTM-style stat+skill checks. So if you have 1 point in Subterfuge and 9 points in Agility, effectively you have 10 points in Subterfuge.
Science works similarly for scavenging machine parts.

But you need at least 1 point, to have the skill "unlocked", plus later parts of the game barely have any locks, so even if there is any variance in locked chest difficulty, those are still pretty low.

I don't disagree with that. What I'm saying is, I doubt having 1 point in Subterfuge would be as beneficial for my minmaxed occultist with 3 Agility as it would be for a combat-oriented build with 5-7 Agility, for example.

Yeah, from what I saw, those "low difficulty" tests still require around 6-8 total, so 1 subterfuge on 3 Agi will probably be a wasted point.

My rule of the thumb was to only invest in skills that have at least 6 in governing stat. Then again, I noticed that going over 14 total is also quite pointless, ie. I should have invested into 4 science, instead of pumping occult to 9.

 

[V_K]

How many spells are there in total? Circlce of protect btw is quite strong, at least in the beginning, love it!

Evil Eye - stat debuff
Blood Circle - defence buff
Spit of Al ??? - dmg + AoE dmg when augmented
Tongue Of The Dead - dialogue spell / sanity dmg
Host of Loa - status effect immunity buff
Damnation To Stone - CC stun
Children of Pazuzu - broken...
Gaze of Abyss - stat buff
Nightwalk - subterfuge / immunity buff
Hand of Nergal - dmg

So I'd say 11 (10 with Pazuzu broken), as Spit is the only one with major augment difference between targeted and AoE. Other augments mostly offer numerical boosts to AP/Sanity/dmg.

You forgot Birth of Deva, although it doesn't look terribly useful.
Children of Pazuzu isn't broken, just targeting it is s bit bugged. But when it does proc, it's quite powerful. Its enhanced version gives a disease debuff, so I'd say significantly different.
Enhanced Host of Loa is indeed broken, but when they fix it, the ap buff would be quite useful.
Nightwalk increases stealth, not subterfuge, and by whooping 10 points, allowing to waltz freely through blasted street.