Torment Torment beta, the spoilery secrets and experiences thread

[Prime Junta]

Anyone care to share stories of how the T:ToN beta went down in your various attempts? Cool twists, stuff you've discovered, things you're struggling with, etc.?

Tagging MRY, Brother None, CMcC in case they're interested, as this is feedback also.

Some stuff that surprised me in a good way:

Rescuing the cocktopus

Spoiler

I "fixed" the clock by smashing one of the consoles instead of doing the puzzle like a good little gamer. Consequently night fell on the Circus, and I was able to have a polite conversation with the cocktopus. I was then able to modify the teleporter thingy to zap him to safety instead of to the Reef for slaughter, and lie to the Aeon Priest that the device must've been broken to start with.

Various ways to deal with the sticha

Spoiler

I've successfully negotiated with them to leave (nice reward), snuck into their tunnels to steal eggs (and failed, not enough stealth, but I'm sure that'd work too), and fought them and lost, because the bleeping crisis bugged out and Aligern stopped responding to commands. Each of these led to a different resolution. I'm sure that successfully stealing the eggs would've led to yet another one, and there would've been various options to choose from to dispose of the eggs. That's some stellar reactivity there. I was especially impressed that there was a resolution for losing the fight, beyond simply reloading.

The Fifth Eye and the Adversary

Spoiler

I just thought the whole Fifth Eye thing was really nicely set up. They made me work to find the solution, and it involved some oblique thinking as well. The combat encounter was a bit of a letdown, but perhaps it'll be more fun once they've got cyphers fully working as intended.

Qorro

Spoiler

Again, stellar reactivity here. In my first playthrough I just killed the motherfucker, end of story. In my latest one, I talked my way past the initial encounter with him, then took pity on him and got him a couple of brownie points with the Aeon Priests. I really liked the way an adversary was turned into an ally of sorts here, and I hope I'll run into him again in the full game.

One thing that I'm not able to crack to my satisfaction is the Undercity murder mystery.

Spoiler

I can finger a suspect and get a (hefty) reward, but don't have any proper evidence. The Dendra O'Hur cultists won't give me any more information. I get the feeling that that one bruiser knows something but he won't talk to me unless I do him a favor, and he hasn't told me what favor he'd want me to do, and I haven't been able to figure it out. I've tried talking to the broker of secrets in the Red Hedge thing, using the Omniscope to look into the past of various locations, but no luck. One of them mentions seeing the sign in a village near the Bloom, but that's not accessible in the beta. So I'm kinda stuck here. Will keep poking around, but have any of you managed to solve it satisfactorily?

I also haven't been able to repair the resonance chamber. Are you supposed to be able to do it in the beta? The signposting directs to the Valley of Dead Heroes and that's not in the beta, so I'm suspecting maybe not.

Some things I thought were a bit meh:

The infodumpy start

Spoiler

I've bitched about this in the other threads, but it's serious enough that it's worth restating: way TMI in the early game. Cut a lot of the dialog nodes from the Specter, Aligern, and Callistege giving in-depth information that early, move the kid by the gate, and move the Last Tabaht to the Government District, and I'll be a lot less whiny about it.

The Perseia quest

Spoiler

This was a bit... blatant really, an obvious abuser/victim scenario strongly pushing you to act in a certain way. I would've dug it if they had somehow made the whole thing a bit more ambiguous.

Finding Matkina

Spoiler

I've bitched about this in the other threads also, but here it is again: I thought it was signposted way too obviously. I beelined straight for her on my first playthrough, and she's supposed to be this super-badass super-stealthy assassin who ought to be near-impossible to track down if she wants to stay hidden. It'd be nice if they found a way to obfuscate this a little.

The Supervisor and his babies

Spoiler

I don't dig pathos, and this was it in distilled form. At least let us get to know the guy before killing him off if you expect us to care for him.

 

[veevoir]

This is gold. Especially with


I got something enitrely different. I play a talkative jack (charm, intellect edge and slick descriptor make for one hell of a conversation winner) and:

Spoiler

Of course I didn't even have an option to smash the consoles. Knew that the night hint is strong, but found no way to make it "night". Therefore I worked with Aeon priest, killed the cocktopus (75HP..) and got my quest rewards

Curious - did you get the quest reward (weapon, cash) for that?

As for Qorro:

Spoiler

Surrendered to him just for shit and giggles - great, straight away to OoT quest! What's more interesting - if you let him go check the questmark before you and rest 1-2 times they get in trouble.

 

[Prime Junta]

Nope, no reward other than XP.

I was able to rescue the cocktopus with a similarly talky character...

Spoiler

I misconfigured the consoles. That gave me the option to hulk out on one of them. Didn't need any points in Smashing.

 

[veevoir]

Nope, no reward other than XP.

I was able to rescue the cocktopus with a similarly talky character...

Spoiler

I misconfigured the consoles. That gave me the option to hulk out on one of them. Didn't need any points in Smashing.

Shit, I'm too good at puzzles. Can you fix them afterwards or does that action still allow you to complete the clock quest?

 

[Prime Junta]

Not that I know of. Once broken they stay broken. (There is the one guy who specialises in fixing numenera, but he didn't have to say anything about them either.)

 

[veevoir]

So basically those two quest outcomes (finishing clock quest and "being good guy to cocktopus") are mutually exclusive. Nice.

I assume the clock quest still gave you the second descriptor (aka

Spoiler

meeting with 3 castoffs

)

 

[Prime Junta]

Yes.

 

[Zed]

spoil the main quest so I can skip this game

 

[veevoir]

spoil the main quest so I can skip this game

You walk around a lot, talk to people, kill some. Then you win.

 

[Prime Junta]

^
Killing is optional. Talking isn't.

 

[DosBuster]

So, some character in the front of the city council immediately recognized me as Adahn, and my character somehow remembered things revolving around this Adahn character that to my knowledge had not been made known to me.

I either broke something or the castoff might be an unreliable narrator. What's more interesting is that if the appearance of the castoff changes then how is it that someone is able to connect my appearance with that of another (supposed) cast off.

EDIT: The only reason I don't mind the infodumpy start is that on one hand I'm a firm believer that the info we're being fed may not be exactly correct. The other being that if there isn't a tour guide telling you where to rest right after the first crisis then you're opening up the forums to a fucking flood of "How do I rest???" questions.

 

[veevoir]

So, some character in the front of the city council immediately recognized me as Adahn, and my character somehow remembered things revolving around this Adahn character that to my knowledge had not been made known to me.

I either broke something or the castoff might be an unreliable narrator. What's more interesting is that if the appearance of the castoff changes then how is it that someone is able to connect my appearance with that of another (supposed) cast off.

EDIT: The only reason I don't mind the infodumpy start is that on one hand I'm a firm believer that the info we're being fed may not be exactly correct. The other being that if there isn't a tour guide telling you where to rest right after the first crisis then you're opening up the forums to a fucking flood of "How do I rest???" questions.

Adahn seems to be alias of changing god, so they recognize you from the time he inhabited your body - thats my guess.

 

[DosBuster]

So, some character in the front of the city council immediately recognized me as Adahn, and my character somehow remembered things revolving around this Adahn character that to my knowledge had not been made known to me.

I either broke something or the castoff might be an unreliable narrator. What's more interesting is that if the appearance of the castoff changes then how is it that someone is able to connect my appearance with that of another (supposed) cast off.

EDIT: The only reason I don't mind the infodumpy start is that on one hand I'm a firm believer that the info we're being fed may not be exactly correct. The other being that if there isn't a tour guide telling you where to rest right after the first crisis then you're opening up the forums to a fucking flood of "How do I rest???" questions.

Adahn seems to be alias of changing god, so they recognize you from the time he inhabited your body - thats my guess.

Hmm... if it's such a major character, then there has to be a reason they used that exact name, right? Either that or it's a red herring to distract us from the other secret in front of our face.

 

[Prime Junta]

Yeah, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

My take was the same as veevoir's -- I assumed that Adahn is the Changing God's most recent handle, and the people addressing TLCO as Adahn were on first-name terms with him. I.e. I haven't seen anything to seriously make me suspect TLCO, the Specter, or even Aligern or Callistege are unreliable narrators as such. (Lando, OTOH...)

 

[Echo Mirage]

As for the murder mystery part.

Spoiler

I pointed the finger at the female cultist who tells you about the markings in the bloom. She mentions that the other two cultists kill, but don't consume the whole body like she would. But in truth I'm not convinced she is the killer.

But I had nothing else to work with.

 

[Prime Junta]

Spoiler

I tried it twice. First I fingered the same mutant as you did, but she died under... questioning. The second time around I said it's the one with the Japanese-sounding name. She disappeared before she could be interviewed, and now I have a quest to find her. I'm not satisfied with either solution.

I have just a hunch that the proper solution may not be in the beta. The markings are in the Bloom as you said which isn't in it; that's where I'd like to look next.

 

[DosBuster]

So, in one of the bars what was the whole deal with that endless battle thing? I couldn't figure out who the suspect was in the bar, did anyone get this?

 

[Prime Junta]

I did.

Spoiler

Have a drink. It'll become... clearer.

 

[Moth]

To answer an above question without any spoiler-ly info, you can indeed turn the Circus to night by smashing a console AND fix it later. It simply involves going to the "west" (the game seems to tell you frick all about cardinal directions, so it may not actually be west for record of any autist who may have kept track of screen changes) and investigating the machine next to The Genocide.

 

[Prime Junta]

Cool, gotta investigate that. I did manage to get that console working, but it didn't reverse the damage I had done to the ones around the Clock...

 

[Moth]

For further hints, you can find the same machine in the government district (?) and it will now inform you that the same information you realized in the Circus is present there as well. I assume it will become important later in the act.

 

[Prime Junta]

Whaddya know, it worked.

 

[Fredward]

So anyone manage to get that item of off Loss of Self or whatever her name is at Cliff's Edge?

Spoiler

The description mentions the CG's daughter.

Also

Spoiler

Am I missing something with the abykos? Killed them but Tybir and Cal are down, one to go and I only have my Nano castoff left and her attacks do zero damage. Consistently.

 

[Prime Junta]

(1) I did. Just vanilla dialog-wrangling.
(2) Sounds like a bug. First attempt, half my party stopped responding to commands. Second attempt, I killed them dead.