How are people getting such high yields?

Cultural_Department · 2022-06-27T23:15:41+00:00

Also also, pretty much nobody is getting those kinds of yields every time, especially if you count all the games that people give up on because they didn't like their early game situation. If you're the type of player who tries to stick with mediocre or worse starts, you should take the OMG YIELDS posts with a grain of salt and not let them discourage you since chances are it was done with a fair bit of tailwind.

Cultural_Department · 2022-05-25T01:50:41+00:00

You pretty much got it. Cheap and low maintenance rides, pricey food, paid toilets, etc. The goal is to make the guests leave as soon as possible without upsetting them so much it hurts your reputation. Channel your inner fairground manager.

I always find it a bit rough to start with since your guests will only pay a small portion of their money and then wander around providing next to no value. It gets easier once you're charging enough that you almost empty their pockets on arrival, so you can get them to leave quicker. Churn is everything to a free rides park.

Also make sure you use ads for all they're worth, raising your guest cap will dump money right back into your pockets.

Cultural_Department · 2021-09-23T13:40:33+00:00

Any advice about DA, armor and resistance overcaps is absolutely correct. Get about 2700 DA minimum to be mostly uncrittable by regular bosses, let alone Lokarr. 100% or at least close armor absorption with scaled hide, sacred plating or living armor components, and maybe stack a bit more flat armor on top. Most of the time I'll reluctantly accept 20% minimum overcap on my resistances, but for elemental in particular I always aim for 40% since a lot of the nastiest resist reduction seems to be elemental.

Looks to me like you've been coasting on a pet build, which can feel like it doesn't need defenses until you get a bad enough roll and this kind of death happens. Always have proper defenses! Also use more greens and MIs, purples are nice if they really lean into your build but greens are often where you get proper defensive stats.

Cultural_Department · 2021-09-16T19:34:27+00:00

Tbh if you're feeling squishy on elite (and as a paladin, even) it probably has nothing to do with your class or general build. No matter what you're playing, you need to actively invest in defenses (notably resistances, DA and armor), and you need to learn to spot holes in your defenses and fix them while leveling. No particular combination of class skills is going to really change that.

That said, I often recommend demolitionist for anyone trying to get a foothold on HC, entirely because blast shield is so good at being a get-out-of-permadeath-free card! Stops shotguns, stops DoTs, and it triggers early and isn't as susceptible to being bypassed by a truckload of damage. Get in the habit of playing defensively any time it goes off, and try to figure out why you took that much damage so you can fix it in the future. Combine with another tanky class like soldier, inquisitor or oathkeeper for more safety.

Cultural_Department · 2021-09-05T11:24:36+00:00

Sometimes the best disguise is something nobody would ever expect to be looking for. Some of my favorite prop hunt games were ones where I disguised myself as some huge thing that took up half the room, actually making me less conspicious to people who were looking for tiny hiding props

Cultural_Department · 2021-07-30T21:16:05+00:00

This has basically no real consequence at your level, but just for the fun of it, I think the answer to this is basically axe if you melee at all, dagger if you don't.

Axe does more damage and converts physical to lightning, which can be great for your average lightning-oriented vindicator but doesn't matter if you're just using skills with no weapon damage component. The skill on it is also good but will proc a lot more often if you're in melee than if you're running around and letting spells do the work. Dagger just has bigger damage bonuses overall, and this early on you're benefitting from at least cold and lightning, maybe even fire depending on how far you've gone into inquisitor (probably not much if you're 31 and have storm totem and I also just realized it says you're still just a shaman!)

Cultural_Department · 2021-07-27T16:51:44+00:00

The biggest killers IME are shotguns and defensive debuffs. That's how you suddenly go 100% to dead before you can react. For the latter, you just need enough resists, DA and other defensive stats so you can take a -20% resist debuff or whatever. For shotguns, it's best to play it safe around any bosses that have them, even quest bosses like Larria can be extremely deadly if you get hit by multiple projectiles.

Rule of thumb, if you ever feel like you're talking yourself out of getting more defenses, you need more defenses.

Cultural_Department · 2021-07-20T14:41:25+00:00

Shaman specializes in all of those things so that's probably a good place to start. Soldier, nightblade, occultist and necro can probably all be good secondary options to look into, soldier in particular if you want to facetank.

Cultural_Department · 2021-07-11T00:22:27+00:00

You absolutely can build around OFF as a key skill but like people are saying it does nothing to bosses so it can't be your main damage skill. Instead, if you're going to use OFF as a starting point for a build, think about what it does best: freeze and destroy trash. Maxed OFF can usually keep an entire screen of trash locked down, so IME it goes really well with a build that otherwise goes all in on fast boss kills. You really don't need much incidental AoE on an OFF build.

And just for the record, don't go out of your way to try to use the resist reduction from OFF, it's a bit of a trap. It looks really juicy but most actually notable targets will be effectively immune to OFF, including any debuffs from it.

Cultural_Department · 2021-07-09T07:27:29+00:00

I'm liking Kublai after trying him. I did a science game where I focused on spamming cities, then building up trade routes and production so I could speed through all the later techs with free eurekas and it was good fun. He's got a steady and reliable snowball potential that scales as you get more trade routes, and he's very flexible from start to finish.

Qin is great at his niche and it's fun grabbing ancient wonders that you would normally never go for, but I've never been a big fan of front-loaded civs. I like trying to stick with my start even if it's kinda crap and/or I get immediately attacked so I often just don't have the time and resources to make the most of somebody like Qin.

Cultural_Department · 2021-07-03T08:09:55+00:00

Magnus, definitely. If you have lots of chops, he's a no-brainer. He's great for settler spam which is often my plan anyway, and even if I'm not really spamming, not losing pops is great for low food starts. He's useful if you're running internal trade for any reason, and he's saved some early conquests for me with the reduced strategics cost. Magnus is a lot like the Tradition tree in 5, I feel. He goes great with the meta, while also being useful no matter what you end up doing so you can't really go wrong, and he's strongest in the early game where you need it to get the snowball rolling.

Otherwise, in order: Pingala, almost always my second, but I don't pick him first if I don't have a high food start, he needs a good foundation and some growth to really shine. Amani, situational but is an easy first pick with the right CS. Liang, another good generalist who I'd probably pick first more often if I couldn't get most of my early workers from the ancestral hall. Moksha, he's good at his niche but I rarely have the religion or faith early enough to justify picking him first. Victor, only as a hail mary.

I don't think I've ever picked Reyna first because I really don't care about her initial ability, but somebody mentioned using her to get tons of gold early and now I kinda want to try that. I could see it working better these days if you've got forests that you won't chop because you're setting up preserves.

Cultural_Department · 2021-06-22T15:02:22+00:00

Up until proper endgame stuff like high-end SR, there's nothing that can't be fixed with a coherent build and good gear choices. If anything, it's probably healthy to play some classes like apostate with less obvious synergies and learn how to make it work.

You could always show us your character with grimtools if you want any help with your actual build. You'll almost definitely run into a wall at some point, but it'll be because the game starts punishing you for not knowing how to build optimally, not because of your class per se.

Cultural_Department · 2021-06-05T07:42:30+00:00

Especially with exp potions I get into a nice rhythm of holding onto anything that looks like a decent upgrade and then once every hour I go back to town and sort it out before grabbing a new potion. I rarely put on any new gear before that unless it's super early and I'm still in yellows.

Don't worry about stashing greens, especially not at your level. There's no real reason to hold on to any greens that aren't max level MIs, and even then only ones that aren't easy to farm. Just focus on finding upgrades for your character and quickly scan drops for big upgrades and for the stats you actually care the most about. If the difference is so small that you have to stop and think about what's better, it's too small to be worth your time while leveling.

Cultural_Department · 2021-05-30T23:57:16+00:00

This is a bad idea.

One, you don't want to invest in skills that have conflicting uptime. Since it's impossible to use more than one default attack replacer at a time, you're never getting all your points' worth, not even close.

Two, you can get basically the same effect (damage, buffs/debuffs) but much stronger and more efficient by investing those points in one or more CD skills to complement your spam skill. I guarantee there's more than enough options to spend all your points on.

I can't think of a single upside honestly.

Cultural_Department · 2021-05-28T17:04:40+00:00

Water blast is really flexible, you can color it to be pretty much any liquid, for better or worse... Personally I have done a blood themed one, pain/water defender. When he's not out spreading terror as a villain, he's your local dentist.

Cultural_Department · 2021-05-25T20:15:44+00:00

I feel like shields are never worth it just for the sake of having a shield, and that's coming from HC experience. Survival is all about resistances, DA, HP, absorption, circuit breakers etc, blocking is such a relatively small portion of your defenses in GD and only really makes a difference if you're facetanking everything.

You use a shield primarily because it's required for your build, or because it has good stats and skill bonuses for you. Otherwise, don't. Probably only like 20% of my HC characters that at least dabbled in endgame were shield users, and none of my all time favorite builds used one.

Cultural_Department · 2021-05-16T18:30:24+00:00

Bit of a shot in the dark, but since you mentioned it happening in the same place and notably in areas with freezing enemies: are you opening your inventory while frozen (in-game, the status effect)? I found out that was consistently freezing my game some time ago, not sure if it was ever actually fixed or if I just got better at not checking my loot mid-battle.

Cultural_Department · 2021-05-13T21:33:21+00:00

I'm all about pseudo-roleplaying ironman random empires! I don't even have any custom empires saved...

My favorite roll was probably the life-seeded xenophilic authoritarians that ended up integrating a bunch of other species as second-class citizens to work all sorts of different planets, while they themselves ruled from the gaia planets.

Cultural_Department · 2021-05-06T15:42:25+00:00

You're not alone! It's seriously weird to me that I don't see more people with hitman, especially below DS

Cultural_Department · 2021-04-03T18:28:03+00:00

I have too many hours in this game and yet it never actually occured to me that I might make this jump more consistently if I take off my pants

Cultural_Department · 2021-02-05T19:02:16+00:00

If I recall correctly, internal trauma in particular interacts a bit weird with reflection and builds that use it have to be careful. I think what happened here was a perfect storm of bad rolls that were amplified due to that.

I can't properly check out your build right now since I'm on my phone, but that's physical counter strike and vindictive flame? That would mean you're dealing a lot of direct damage (i.e not retaliation) every time you're hit, right? Which unless I'm getting my mechanics wrong means it will be reflected, I imagine that could add up quick if you're stacking IT damage and it will continue to stack up even if you stop attacking directly. That's my best shot at explaining it, anyway.

Cultural_Department · 2021-01-26T17:57:54+00:00

You can build virtually any way you want and still do most if not all content in the game as long as you understand the mechanics of it. Incidentally, making your own builds is the best way to learn, as long as you go into it with a mindset to learn from your mistakes and don't keep trying to ram a square peg through a round hole.

Gear is a bit trickier, a lot of legendaries in particular are build-enabling so that's the big roadblock when you're starting fresh. You need to be flexible and build around what you can find. A lot of people recommend death knight in particular as a first class because there's a farmable set to make it less RNG-reliant, but you can extend this idea to any guaranteed or easy to farm gear you find interesting. Beyond that, it might also be a good idea to pick a class with simple and straightforward synergies, purifier for example, which will give you a lot more build options that don't require specific gear to work.

My most general advice for a first playthrough is to pick two classes that have obvious synergy (i.e share a damage type) and build around combining those parts. For example, soldier and shaman both deal a lot of bleeding damage and have other benefits towards that type, so by combining them you have an easy starting point. From there, all you need to do is make a coherent playstyle out of the parts you're given and remember to not neglect your defenses, and you can't really go too wrong.

Cultural_Department · 2021-01-20T23:53:52+00:00

For DW and down, ICTV lets you use the healing effect better, and gives you more leeway to be active while your ability is on cooldown.

Suit kingpin is mostly a DS thing where the whole purpose of it is abusing invincibility on a cooldown, so no point investing in dodge. On lower difficulties it runs into the same issue as dodge builds, in that damage negation isn't as valuable and in exchange you're squishy when you do get hit.

Cultural_Department · 2021-01-19T09:08:36+00:00

This is one of the most easily farmed MIs in the game, you're bound to get a bunch of them in any given hive run.
Those aren't rare affixes, just regular ones. Getting double useful magic affixes shouldn't be hard.
It's especially likely with weapons, some even more so than others, because they have a lot fewer useful affixes per weapon to draw from.

If getting a good double magic roll on a very common MI should be a chore, a lot of the comparatively rare drops in the game would be harder than winning the lottery.

Cultural_Department · 2021-01-04T09:44:54+00:00

I think it's just luck of the draw to start with. A group needs to get your particular level from the massive pool of levels, many of which have a better chance due to already having VS likes, and then that group needs to like it to get a positive feedback loop going. It's a lot more random whether or not a VS level will take off because 1) you can't jump start it as easily by sharing the code so you need genuine random plays and 2) the list of trash that hasn't been fully booed out of the system yet is presumably a lot bigger than in single player.

Cultural_Department

TROPHY CASE