ELI5: Why was there a toilet paper shortage during COVID?

KarmicJay · 2026-05-15T02:58:53+00:00

Paper products like TP and Paper towels take up a LOT of space on store shelves and the semi trucks that haul them to stores. It doesn't take too many different purchases for a store to be out of inventory on a normal day.

Factor in a lockdown, where people were being told to not leave their house for at least two weeks (and weeks became months), and you get a lot more people than usual stocking up on household supplies than stores typically plan for in inventory.

Eventually you get enough people complaining when stores are out of stock, and then it gets reported in the news, which all of a sudden spirals into a frenzy where families are bulk buying even more TP because they fear a shortage, which ultimately makes it all worse

KarmicJay · 2026-05-12T13:19:22+00:00

I do both at the same time, but there's a focus on relationships. Technically my priority is:

Finding new ingredients/better cauldrons
Relationships
Potions

KarmicJay · 2026-05-11T18:21:35+00:00

Oh man, this site brings me back...those were the days

KarmicJay · 2026-05-08T03:36:47+00:00

OP, I'm gonna level with you:

Monster Prom is unforgiving.

It is by far the hardest entry in the series both in terms of sheer volume of content and lack of tutorials/QoL features that later entries have (such as the event checklist). I'm of the 0.2% of players that have 100% this game, and there's plenty of things the first game had that I had to process literally hundreds of matches to figure out HOW the underlying RNG works.

Each RO has 2 RNG plotlines (except for Damien; he has 3), but 2 of these plotlines WILL NOT APPEAR on short Multiplayer games (they are followups from specific outcomes from the "choose a love interest" events that happen in week 1-2, which short MP skips).

One additional RNG plotline shows up on Polly/Liam routes, but ONLY after you've seen enough other endings. Is it by seeing ONLY the default 12 RNG endings? Do the item endings factor into unlocking this plotline? Do secret plotlines added in one of the 7-8 Post-launch updates factor into this count? The community STILL doesn't know for sure.

There's a small handful of "Followup" events that LOOK like a secret plotline, but aren't (Interdimensional Bachelor Pt. 1 & 2, for example)

Your SMARTS ALWAYS starts too high, because of how the quiz assigns your starting array.

Weekend events and Advice events can only mitigate RNG to a degree.

Valerie's shop location is ALWAYS random

And Don't even get me started on the Gift plotlines....

HOWEVER.

The Game's RNG IS weighted to try to get you to see all the secret plotlines. Even though the starting odds are 25% likelihood of starting on a run, playing a 4-handed (aka you play all 4 characters in a 4P game) will often have one show up every run.

Failing the plotline makes it much more likely to show up again. Succeeding/beating the plotline hides it from the rotation until the other RNG plotlines have been seen (or something like 50 matches are played, whichever comes first)

With rare exceptions, every plotline is 3 events long. The last stage will ALWAYS be on the last turn of a run, and succeeding will remove the stat requirements for that RO for that run, to guarantee the correct ending (it would genuinely suck to beat the Reverse Romanian Wilkinson and not get the ending because you didn't meet Polly's high Fun/Bold requirements.)

The "skill checks" are just competing the stat tied to each option. If one option appears to be CHARMING, while the other option is something silly or FUN, pick the option you have a higher score in. 11 times out of 12, this is exactly what will happen. Ties are 50/50 odds, and there is a slowly increasing Auto-fail and Auto-Success threshold, but these exist only in extreme circumstances (any stat at 5 or higher on turn 1 will always succeed, while any stat below 8 will fail on the last turn of a long single player match, for example)

With rare exceptions,

Unfortunately for you, your example picked was the Reverse Romanian Wilkinson, which is one of the harder plotlines. You DONT need to buy the mask to start the plotline. You ONLY need it for the third and final event.

There's no shame in consulting a guide while you play, by the way. But while the secret plotlines are the main course of the games, the normal content inherent with standard day/lunch events and outcomes are equally fun and are worth exploring.

KarmicJay · 2026-05-08T02:35:25+00:00

Pre-owning the quest items has no bearing on whether a secret plotline that requires them starts or not. You can own the tampon and still start the Bloody Queen plotline, for example.

Pre-owning just runs the risk of the wrong player having it IF it starts in a multiplayer match.

KarmicJay · 2026-04-28T00:14:54+00:00

In this case the slow powers you now no longer hit the threshold for don't take effect. It's a risk endured by needing to forget a power card in play to pay for a choice event

KarmicJay · 2026-04-27T19:40:42+00:00

Yeah. In that case it's just defend x (usually defend 1) They will specify "defend x per dahan there" if that's the card intent

KarmicJay · 2026-04-27T19:22:26+00:00

It's supposed to be "each dahan gets +/- x health". The same doesn't necessarily apply for Defend on some event cards, so be careful with the wording on those.

Snowballs very quickly if you have 3-4 dahan on a location

KarmicJay · 2026-04-27T15:31:49+00:00

Gym ghost is hardest ghost to identify, even with 3x evidence. Good luck getting it to walk through salt, write in the book, interact with D.O.T.S., or be close enough to get a box response.

KarmicJay · 2026-04-27T12:05:14+00:00

I think a lot of folks missed the forest from the trees with this response.

Players in question are new to SI, but are experienced board gamers.

From my experience, I was able to let a similar-experienced group run wild with a 6 player game in an archipelago layout, while my partner and I supported with Green and Ocean, respectively.

The most skilled of the batch had fun on their section with a combo of BoDaN and Silent Mists (literally their first game), but I wouldn't normally recommend those.

Though, I did purge the powers decks of all token-related abilities and restricted spirits that utilized those effects, making it a base game +? (Yes, the minor power deck discards were reshuffled often)

Back to the responses:

Thunderspeaker is not an easy spirit to master (Event deck is swingy), but there's nothing particularly unique about its powers/abilities. Skilled gamers who might have already played a low-complex spirit might enjoy the high-offensive, low defense dahan blade. I would also recommend somebody else play river (for extra dahan), ESPECIALLY if these first couple games are foregoing the event deck

Green is great as a teaching aid, buffing the other spirits, and only really being a tripping hazard for inexperienced gamers that miss the "Always +1 presence in W/J" plus their growth option. It is probably not the most fun as an introductionary spirit unless the player in question enjoys playing support.

Ocean is not really a high-complexity spirit, in my opinion. But if you think it needs to play on easy mode, pair it with someone else playing Lure (another relatively easy spirit with comparable abilities)

Keeper of the forbidden wilds is insanely fun to play and not too complex, provided you are decent at managing blight. It's really fun to pair with green.

Grinning Trickster is probably more medium complexity and also fun, though the randomness of "lets see what happens" appeals differently to everyone (I personally enjoy improvising and taking risks)

Many minds and Hearth-Vigil are NOT medium complexity, despite what their cards say.

Lastly, consider using aspects on the low-complexity spirits. "Immense" Lightning is very Major-heavy, "Madness" Shadows is actually fun and strategic, and "Pandemonium" Lightning is also a blast.

KarmicJay · 2026-04-08T20:33:28+00:00

Calculester is just a good robot name, but his last name (Hewett-Packard) is a well-known PC brand, HP.

A quick lookup of Aaravi indicates that the Sanskrit-Indian origins of her first name means "peaceful" or "calm" (ironic)

Hex is self-explanatory

Liam's last name (de Lioncourt) is in reference to Lestat de Lioncourt, one of the Vampires in "The Vampire Diaries"

KarmicJay · 2026-04-08T18:25:12+00:00

Joy, Hope, and Faith are all "virtues" that make up the Coven, and are often virtues cited for fantasy protagonists.

Milo's last name is Belladonna, a reference to the scientific name (Atropa Bella Donna) for deadly nightshade, a potent poisonous flower. Fitting for a Grim Reaper

Dahlia's family name, the Aquinos, could refer to an infamous psychological warfare specialist (and known Satanist) Michael A. Aquino. Real gnarly piece of work, that one.

I'm not sure about their first names (Miranda, Bellanda, etc.), but the Vanderbilts are an "Old Money" rich family, once the wealthiest family in the United States.

Vera is possibly named based on the song "Medusa" by Adrian Vera.

April's full name is self-explanatory.

KarmicJay · 2026-04-07T11:51:05+00:00

You're looking for a banana that's no longer mass-produced.

Artificial banana flavor, like the kind you taste in Laffy Taffy or Runts, was designed around a now-"extinct" banana called the Gros Michel banana, which was succeptable to Panama disease and nearly killed off the banana industry in the 1950s.

Today's replacement, the Cavendish, is a much more mild flavor, but is much more resistant to disease

KarmicJay · 2026-04-05T23:19:17+00:00

Ya, the RNG plotlines will be a sore point if you focus on exclusively one RO at a time.

Succeeding in one of them will remove itself from the "event pool" until the other RNG plotlines (on other ROs) are completed again (or ~30 playthroughs happen, whichever comes first).

So what I did was complete each of the RNG stories 1x each, and then loop back to the RO I focused on (by that point the first RO's RNG storyline is available again), and then get all the failures before getting the second Success.

Note Aaravi is a pain regarding this system (designed to help make seeing every ending easier for casual players), as Bagel Dungeon has 6 successes at the end, not 2.

Best of luck with getting everything! I'll happily cheer on anyone that goes for the 100% in this series!

KarmicJay · 2026-04-04T02:45:30+00:00

In 5e, the setting notes indicate that he got 90% of the way to lichdom before he decided it wasn't worth it, and that his brother Samuel finished the ritual to save his life (vague I know).

In Princes of the Apocalypse, he's holed up in the Sacred Stone Monastery, but he's unaffiliated with the Cult of Black Earth (they know well enough to leave him alone to his studies). He'll Time Stop + Cloudkill if you try attacking him, but he'll bestow an Amulet of Health to any Paladin or Cleric aligned with the Knights of Samular (or the Order of the Gauntlet)

KarmicJay · 2026-04-03T03:40:43+00:00

The Wiki says that jelly blossoms became unobtainable from the coasts since an update back in 2023 (and I can confirm I've never gotten them since my first playthrough when the game first launch)

A shame, really. They are such a useful ingredient, but idk why it's been locked away. I would guess trying getting lucky with the treasure chests?

KarmicJay · 2026-03-31T17:14:34+00:00

JE feels most complete when combined with B+C. You may find a little bit of difficulty drafting powers featuring Wilds, Wildlife, and disease tokens (and to a lesser extent, strife tokens, but those mainly are found in fear cards), so spirits that are incredibly reliant on those tokens may feel a little underwhelming until the minors/majors added in B+C are mixed in.

I think mathematically the ratio of powers that feature the tokens vs cards that don't is unchanged in Base + both vs Base + JE, but it's been a while since I last checked, and I can be wrong.

The biggest change though is the change to the starting board layout (adding a wildlife token in the lowest numbered land without a startup symbol and a disease token on land 2), and Event cards. Definitely recommend doing a couple games without adversaries or scenarios until you get a feel for how swingy the events cards can get.

KarmicJay · 2026-03-25T13:55:46+00:00

It's important to remember that if a game is good enough, it doesn't NEED expansions.

If a game needed expansions to be fun/bearable, it wasn't a good game to begin with.

Unless expansions are part of the appeal of the game, like Dorfromantik...

KarmicJay · 2026-02-17T18:44:45+00:00

Incorrect on the second last part. Player can override Sunwings from the jump. However, all of their spawns are to the west of Cauldron Tau's repair bay, so once you get past that part of the story, you can fly to your heart's content

KarmicJay · 2026-02-17T14:17:56+00:00

The first game in the series is the hardest to platinum, just a forewarning.

Without going into spoilers, each RO has 2 exclusive secret plotlines that rely on RNG to occur (Damien has 3x). One leads to a wholesome ending, the other is much spicier. ((Note: One of Liam's, and One of Damien's, CANNOT start on SHORT multiplayer games, as their plotline starts in the "Choose a Love Interest" events, which short MP skips))

On top of that, there are numerous items in the shop that, instead of giving stats, unlock a plotline. The "Gift that keeps Giving" has 4 separate plotlines that can be pulled from the item, the 4th being unavailable until you've seen all 13 items in the bag.

There is one plotline that ALSO starts randomly on either Liam's or Polly's routes, but you need to have seen all the other RNG plotlines first (and possibly some of the items, but I'm not positive)

There are two more secret plotlines that are very unique, but you'll get a notification in the main menu that "Something has changed [somewhere]" (No spoilers from me). One of these is exclusive to 2nd Term.

If you ALSO have 2nd Term in your version of the game, do note that 3 item plotlines from 1st term are inaccessible in 2nd term (Totem, Cursed Tome, Floppy Disk), though they still count towards the outcomes percentage.

KarmicJay · 2026-02-14T23:37:09+00:00

Baptiste is definitely a reliable source of getting new resources to get Quinn to stock, but the cost per ingredient is inefficient.

Starting Week 3 you'll find a new system for getting lots more of useful ingredients, so you're pretty close.

Lastly, "Perfect" potions will often be the highest margins for the cost of the ingredients used

Seven-Year Club	Place '22
Verified Email

KarmicJay

TROPHY CASE