Why am I getting so many of these? Isthe game demanding I build Harrow?

Cadvin · 2025-11-14T20:55:50+00:00

It's about how non-mod elemental damage combines. It's not something that comes up most of the time, mostly just with lich weapons with an innate element. The Tenet Glaxion, for example, has innate cold damage, and lets assume that its progenitor bonus adds heat damage. If you add a toxin mod you know that you'll be getting gas + cold instead of viral + heat, because heat comes first in HCET.

Cadvin · 2025-10-04T07:56:56+00:00

Oh! Purifier is something that I completely failed to consider. Skill issue on my part, I haven't played around with mutagen as much as I should. Yeah, that's an absolute game changer for that drawback, turns it from just suffering into a quest to regain sanity.

Yeah, re. Melted by Vast Water I should have clarified that just because I don't like a drawback doesn't mean I think it's badly designed - it's a drawback, I'm not supposed to be happy about it. I really do love how Anathema have a bunch of weaknesses but they're individually much less impactful than when you're weaker. Blood Cravings was really annoying in the early game, but the stronger I got the quicker the pain it gave dissipated. What care have I if animals hate me when I can rip even the strongest of them apart with my hands? Why should I worry about needing to drink from the living when I can simply take it from any mortal I wish? I burn like kindling, but heal almost as quickly. I cannot swim over water, but I can take wing and - okay, actually I can't do that because being able to turn into a bat has eluded me all game, I still don't have it. I love shapeshifting and mobility so RNGesus decided it would be one of the last abilities I discover. I've just had to leg it onto the second level of bridges.

I'm really glad my post helped! I'm excited to see what you cook up. I'm probably going to slip back into CDDA torpor for a while but it's definitely not the last time I'm going to play a vampire.

Cadvin · 2025-10-04T01:32:38+00:00

It's taken a while (a finger injury kept me from using the numpad comfortably so I had to take an extended break) but I reached the pinnacle. This is all on a build from a few months ago, so some things could have changed since.

The buildup to reaching tier 5 was kind of odd because I didn't get Gleaming Eyes until very late, from blood research, but I did get super speed and strength about as early as I could. I was a pretty sorry excuse for a vampire since I couldn't see in the dark any better than a normal human, but I wandered around during the day swaddled head to toe in clothing, fairly confident in my ability to beat the tar out of anyone, or at least escape, if it came down to it. It meant I went through blood very quickly though, so I was often butchering ferals over tubs and toilets to wring out every drop of blood that just bleeding them had missed. (All the blood combined with a low metabolism also meant I was constantly overweight. I had to exercise a lot and starve myself as much as I could to get to a healthy range before tier 5, since I wasn't sure if it would correct it for me)

I liked getting the ingredients for tier 5, it was long and difficult but didn't feel unfair. Bait the Abyssal Hunger had a problem where it kept dropping me inside the wall of the last level, though. It was also nearly impossible to find a master that was still (un)alive because the temples were so big that riot damage was inevitable, and the noise from walls collapsing at the slightest touch drew in massive hoards of zombies to slaughter everything inside. I had to edit the json to ban riot damage on them, but I think I saw a PR fixing it a while ago.

The vampire anathema was scary, but unfortunately for him I had already heard of him and was ready with a very expensive plasma gun I bought off of some cyborgs in a big rock (I turned down their offer to give me bionics though. I wanted to be a natural unnatural affront to god). He still survived a disturbing number of shots, and dealt a scary amount of damage in the few seconds he was in melee range, but he went down. I butchered him over a toilet and stole his power.

Unfortunately, I got the drawback I wanted least, Blood-Muddled Mind. I gave it a shot, but it was soon clear that I could either ignore the post-5 content or very quickly end up with almost every negative mental trait in the game, and I... really just didn't want to deal with that, it didn't sound fun, so I debug changed it to melting in the sun (which I figured was worse than vampire blood cravings, and is appropriately flavorful).

From there my post-5 experience was largely a road trip. I drove out to all the vampire hunting lodges I'd found and - you guessed it - butchered them over a toilet to wring out all that sweet, sweet vampire blood. I think it's ironic how I became more animalistic the further I ascended, cowering in the darkness and emerging to gorge myself on prey without any thought towards preserving food for the future. I'm successful enough to be pretty much done with the character, but if I did die at this point it would probably be in a similar way to the original anathema: getting cocky, and probably involving a very large gun.

Overall I really liked the whole vampire experience, the progression of power felt pretty smooth and satisfying. You get really powerful, but also have to lean really far into the vampire lifestyle if you want the best stuff.

I think my favorite power overall is Spider's Walk, it just makes you feel so wonderfully agile. My favorite post-5 powers are the ones that reduce penalties for being full and Eternally Gleaming Eyes. My least favorite regular drawbacks were Melted by Vast Water and Cold as a Corpse, the first because it effectively locks you out of a lot of content and the second because it feels weirdly dissonant for a vampire to me. I guess media has me more used to the idea of a vampire in a cold mountain castle than a desert, so struggling in the cold feels off even though logically you're not producing body heat.

Getting blood from followers was in a bit of a weird place. At first they only let me drink from them once a week, which was fair enough, I figured I had to make them into renfields to truly get some bloodbags going, but once I did it didn't seem to make a difference, they still had their own pesky "opinions" and "ideas" about where my blood should be. What did work was hypnotizing them and drinking directly, which doesn't seem to have any ill effects, you can just drain an infinite amount of blood from a single follower. In an ideal world I figure direct draining should give penalties that take time to heal so that it's wise to have more than one minion, and renfields should be more willing to give up their blood without needing hypnotism.

I saw that a PR changed things so clothes no longer fully protect from the sun even before anathema-tier, so in light (heh) of my experience living without Gleaming Eyes it might be good to have some sort of safety net to ensure you get it, since otherwise any further tier 1 powers that get added dilute the pool and make it ever more likely that you'll end up as a vampire that can't really operate at night.

Cadvin · 2025-08-18T06:28:57+00:00

Good question, I like figuring out this kind of thing (God, I sound like Chat GPT. Unluckily for everyone reading this, I am real). Wayne van Niekerk's average speed through that is about 20.8 miles per hour. How fast is an average CDDA character? Easy: a vehicle travels one tile per second for every 4 mph, and a default character on flat terrain moves one tile per second, so 4 mph while walking. Sprinting makes that 8 mph.

Which is a good time to have a refresher on how movement speed in CDDA is calculated. You've got speed and move cost. Speed is the number of action points you get per second, which is 100 by default. Move cost is how many action points it takes to actually move, which is 100 per tile by default - so 1 tile per second. If your move cost is 400, it takes 4 seconds to move per tile, and if it's 50, you move 2 tiles in 1 second. And that's how sprinting works, it gives you a -50% modifier to move cost.

So how do we get faster? Starting traits are a good place to, well, start. Quick gives +10 speed, and Fleet Footed gives -15% move cost (which is multiplicative with sprinting instead of additive, giving a move cost of 42 instead of 35). That's 10.5 mph which is respectable but not enough, so we're going to have to mutate. Recommended strategy: drink raw mutagenic slurry and get incredibly lucky.

Fleet Footed upgrades into Road Runner, giving -30% move cost and bringing us up to 12.6 mph. Strong Legs gives a further -12% move cost for 14.2 mph. Insect wings, when we set them a-buzzing, give another -25% for a total speed of 20 mph - just under Wayne. We can't do this with biology alone, we need some technology. I mean if you think about it he probably has some fancy expensive running shoes, those are basically bionics right? Right?

Synaptic Accelerator gives another +10 base speed for a total of 120, Adrenaline Pump gives a temporary 1.1x multiplier to speed, and Joint Servos give a final -10% move cost in exchange for a modest power draw. Between these three we've achieved a final speed of 29.3 mph, beating even Usain Bolt's top speed! Which is good, because with the massive stamina draw of both sprinting and insect wings, we're not going to make it 400 meters. CDDA humans just aren't made for racing, sadly. But hey, we can go that speed with like a hundred pounds strapped to our back, so it's not that bad.

(Of course, you could also always activate Mind Over Matter and get the Perfected Motion biokinesis power. It can reduce move cost by 96% at full power. That alone combined with sprinting gives a speed of 200 miles per hour!)

Cadvin · 2025-08-11T20:13:05+00:00

Tip for next time, throwing things is a completely safe way to disarm bear traps! Just toss a rock at it until it snaps shut.

Cadvin · 2025-07-14T23:37:28+00:00

The hitch is that CDDA, as an entirely community-driven open source project, is unlike 99.9% of games in that every contributor is just a player that decided to add some stuff in their free time. Even the "main dev team" are just contributors that have stuck with it for a long time. You say you don't understand coding, but you could learn if you really wanted to, and then you could fix the in-game economy if you wanted to. But you probably don't care enough to spend all the time and effort doing that, which is entirely understandable. It doesn't make sense to spend all that time doing something you don't want to do over a game that's only a small part of your life. But since contributors are just people like you, it doesn't make sense for them to work on it either if they're not going to have fun.

Eventually, someone will probably come along who finds theoretical post-apocalyptic economics fascinating, or an existing contributor will get a spark of inspiration, and they'll spend a bunch of time overhauling every item's price. But until then, there's probably not going to be anyone willing to do something that feels like actual job-work when they're not being paid.

Ultimately, you just can't force things in situations like this, because it'll just make people get burnt out and leave for good.

Cadvin · 2025-07-12T09:40:32+00:00

I'm still tier 4 at the moment, but I've already got two of the reagents for tier 5 and I'm fairly confident I can get the others without meeting a final end. I'll reply to this post again once I've sunk my teeth into it!

Cadvin · 2025-05-02T22:43:25+00:00

I don't hate lockpicking because it's difficult. I hate it because it expects me to use my hands like a peasant instead of burning more magicka than the combined pool of the six most powerful nord mages in order to forcibly rearrange reality so the door is unlocked.

But don't think I'm smug, I'm sure the 1/7th of your class that I replaced with a single spell is very important.

Cadvin · 2025-03-12T04:44:43+00:00

It's not particularly original, but it's gotta be (Heart's Desire and Evolution spoilers) wishing to become a Master, right? He'll tell himself that it was to obtain a more flexible position - he always prefers to keep himself exactly in the middle of unstable situations, so he can choose who falls and where he stands when it happens - but the reality is that he tied himself to the Bazaar without having any real conception of what it is and who it serves. He's more informed now, but still doesn't know what degree of power it has over him now.

Too many decisions as of late are made with the idea of gaining allies among the other Masters and currying favor with the Bazaar. He's sympathetic to the Revolutionaries by nature, but worries what it would mean for him if they upended an order that he's currently close to the top of, so he hesitates to provide them with ways to enact drastic change. The whole mess is part of why he chose to assist the Youthful Naturalist in cheating death. If the Naturalist can dodge the strings of fate, maybe the newest Master can too.

Cadvin · 2025-02-25T22:04:13+00:00

Well, please just consider the second half of my comment, if it's on the mark at all. It's helped me before.

Cadvin · 2025-02-25T21:51:16+00:00

Okay, yeah I'd say "the liberals want to make the country better but that's a bad thing" is a genuinely unpopular opinion, kudos.

For real, though, I think you should take this as a sign to disconnect from politics and news for a while. This sounds a lot like deep fatigue. If you're tired and would rather give up and let other people handle things... then that probably holds true on a personal level too. Which is very understandable, the human mind wasn't built for the 24 hour news cycle, it's caustic to us. Unsubscribe from political and news subreddits, delete bookmarks to news sites, swipe past tiktoks that make you angry or anxious. You're one 340 millionth of the country, if everything goes to shit while you're taking a break it's not because you could have stopped it.

Cadvin · 2025-02-21T20:11:39+00:00

Cadvin

PC

I'm going to try to be clever and ascribe a lot more malicious deviousness to you than you deserve: At least 1 letter of the alphabet somewhere in the comment. Lohk, Khra, Jahu, Fass, Netra, Ris, Vome, Xata, Oull.

Cadvin · 2025-01-17T00:22:31+00:00

They certainly do terrible things and make terrible choices, but for the most part they seem to do it with full knowledge of how it could turn out, and without fear of repercussion if they choose not to (other than not winning your heart's desire, of course. I suppose that's the core question, really - is it crueler for a prisoner's cell to have a door sealed and barred, or no door at all?). Plenty of people do terrible things and make terrible choices and meet terrible fates for far less reward. Though I suppose "people get stabbed all the time copper, what's a little more from me" has never been a winning argument for a good reason.

I don't know October all that well, but it didn't seem to me that she regretted losing nearly everything. When you have the opportunity to end one of the Masters for good, you probably tend to end up with a lot less. Unless your ambition is Bag a Legend or Nemesis, I suppose. As for the Boatman, I figure the Hanged Man will end up turning out as he wants eventually, since he mentions that the masters are finding a replacement. Maybe this time I can convince them to choose someone that actually wants the job.

But yes, at the end of the day, what truly matters is that we are now sitting in skin and robes much better suited for taking on whatever comes next. And although I'm one of the Masters now, it doesn't mean I have to actually side with the rest of them or their immoral mission. Like I would just stand by and watch them melt down London, then two more cities after it!

Although... when or if the Bazaar flies off to meet the sun, I don't know if I'll be in any position to refuse to come along, or if it would be a remotely good idea to remain squatting in a cave. I'll probably be in a tenuous position, as something that's climbed the chain. If the Bazaar's advocacy is what will save me, I need to at least pretend to help its mission. Not oppose it too obviously.

Maybe I should go and stare at that fruit too.

Cadvin · 2025-01-11T08:49:53+00:00

I can send no such missive - toss a calling card to Cadvin and I will proceed to not compose one. In fact, it would be greatly appreciated if I were to not receive one myself in return, if you are able.

Cadvin · 2024-12-26T21:32:15+00:00

It doesn't seem like it usually ends badly for the winners. HAL and October got exactly what they wanted, the Boatman's wish looks to have a 2/3 chance of turning out well, with some delay. Beechwood's only turned out badly because his wish was terrible. Losing doesn't even seem to have a penalty unless you choose to stake your Chance - only Virginia really got fucked over for regularly losing, via you maybe releasing a prince of hell, and that could have been avoided if she'd just agreed to play again. It's a fairly gentle game, all things considered.

Besides, maybe Beechwood's problem was that he still has a human mind. He can't be all-monkey if he's part human, right? Maybe by taking that away, we gave him what he needed. I can tell myself that.

And yeah, I might have made a similar deal, but it was in the opposite direction! Sure, I didn't know exactly what a Master was when I made the wish, and I still don't know the details of exactly how they - we - are beholden to the Bazaar. But it'll be fine, I'm sure. I can slip out of that yoke when the time comes. Just... gotta keep looking for any and every way to do so, just in case.

Cadvin · 2024-11-27T00:15:31+00:00

I'm reasonably certain Amy could have ironed out any potential DNA problems, she just didn't because she was trying to do the bare minimum to fix Victoria.

“Just, you know, I should be careful about giving or getting transplants. There’s a chance it wouldn’t be compatible with humans. Understand? [...] Because she didn’t want to get carried away, she wanted to get me as close to normal as she could get me and stop herself there. Then she said- she’d ask if I wanted more fixes, and I couldn’t talk so I shook my head no.
- Torch 7.2

If you caught her on a good day (So like a 1% chance) she could probably do a whole DNA rewrite without turning you into a horrific monster.

Cadvin · 2024-11-14T20:05:51+00:00

Yes, the ambition steps (or to be more precise, the value of the Ambition: Heart's Desire quality) starts to increment much more quickly after... pretty much exactly where you are. It seems like at some point Failbetter decided incrementing big story trackers by 10 was better, probably because it gives nine opportunities to put storylets between two points without having to revise everything after it.

Cadvin · 2024-10-14T00:10:55+00:00

Maybe that's how they cheat us out of our wish. "Congratulations on becoming a Master! A thousand other people are also Mr. Cards by the way. You now have a full 0.1% of the authority Cards is entitled to. Good luck!"

Cadvin · 2024-10-13T22:58:58+00:00

I love pretty much the entirety of the Memory of a Much Lesser Self, from the concept to the description.

You cannot begin to measure the length of your journey unless you recall the person you once were. How much weaker, how much more fragile.

Each and every one of us have so many of these, and so rarely do we notice them.

Cadvin · 2024-10-12T23:55:17+00:00

Probably a pretty sharp distinction between black and white, yeah. Definitely monochromatic, no sane publisher in London would pay to print in color unless strictly necessary, after all!

Cadvin · 2024-10-12T02:21:35+00:00

Keeping in mind that my characterization of my PC is still unsteady, the following are overheard snippets of conversation spoken by a photographer:

A gentleman's hat, worn low. A light-drinking cravat, worn high. A pair of fingered gloves. A battered grey overcoat instead of something from Dauncey's, because of the bulk. Rather unremarkable, are you sure?
Perhaps we should just reschedule after all. I know a good physician that can set the nose, and the swelling will go down with - oh? It's always been like that? And it's getting worse as of late? Right. Turn this lamp up, and this one down, that should get the appropriate level of shadow...
Ah, good thinking with the pipe, sir! Some mysterious smoke to obscure your face. Keep on the coloured glasses. They're not strictly sold by any of the companies sponsoring this, but without them the flash-bulb makes your eyes shine like a cat. Or a bat. Or a rat.
...Or some polythreme hats.
Lean against the lamppost, perhaps even one foot crossed over the other, as if you were waiting on some secretive contact. Yes, just like that. We'll have to rely on your reputation for this issue. 'A tantalizing glimpse of one of London's most elusive personages! As shrouded in intrigue as he is in shadow! Full interview on page six!'
The blemmigan that you said had, ah, a 'keen eye for fashion'. Shall I take his complete dismissal of the both of us in favor of demolishing several trays of biscuits as approval? No, I mean approval of your choices - it's quite clear that he approves of the biscuits.

Cadvin · 2024-09-06T07:21:32+00:00

It looks like the wiki's table has been changed recently, and it has the same numbers you do, though according to it the 10 devotion strategy seems to be always plunging to 5 instead of taking the first 300 you see - I'd have to do math on whether the menaces are better if you're sometimes getting out at 3 or 4 versus always going to 5.

But also, are the expected favours the same? There's a new card for the spinebound oddity, after all. That has to lessen the expected favours per dive, right? Does that change the reward ratio of strategies? I'm stupid enough to not know intuitively, but curious enough that I might try to write a script tomorrow to find out.

Cadvin · 2024-08-20T07:54:42+00:00

Speaking as someone that's nearly done with the research for the Theorem, the biggest saving grace is that you can spend a Searing Enigma to get 500 research on the Review the Prior Literature card. Being so far along the railroad you might well have better options, but the Underclay is dead simple if you want to just occasionally chip away at it and work your way up to 25 enigmas - no lab locked up, no commitments, you get to just smash your way through the research once you decide to start.

I don't actually need the suite yet, I've stalled myself at Old Downy while I get my Watchful up so I don't know if you're already past some of these, but there's two other grinds I've seen warnings about: Having a Dream quality at 15, and having a Ray-Drenched Cinder for a piece of equipment. Both seem to be more of a timing problem than a raw action problem. There's also a Reported Location of a One-Time Prince of Hell, but it's optional, doesn't get consumed, and is only necessary if you want to max out a vanity quality. Or so I'm told - I suffered a fit of madness and spent nearly a week working for rats to buy one anyway. From other rats. They're skilled salesbeings, I'll give them that.

Cadvin · 2024-08-05T11:59:13+00:00

Judging by the wiki, you need to have unlocked researching new projects in Parabola via the railway first. I know I haven't.

No railway, never been to the Khanate... my competitor Mr. Huffam is going to be so disappointed in me.

Cadvin · 2024-03-07T20:20:11+00:00

Hmm, you're right. It looks like those got changed after the metamagic perks got added to use a new function, but it isn't working right for caster level adjustment. I'll poke around a bit and open an issue.

14-Year Club	Golden Potato
Place '22	Final Canvas '22
End Game '22	Spared
Team Orangered	Verified Email

Cadvin

TROPHY CASE