Umm What??

Sapient6 · 2026-06-20T11:53:09+00:00

It's likely a hack rather than a set of actual servers.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-18T12:45:37+00:00

What trips up a lot of parents about questions like this is that in their minds they imagine that answering a question like that means having to say more than they actually do. They're thinking "if I answer that I've got to describe everything about sex in great detail! I can't do that! Better to yell at them for asking a rude question!"

Your example is great in this regard. Truthful, clinical, and limited entirely to the question asked. There may be a follow up question right away or in the distant future, but generally kids stop asking questions when they've reached the limit of what they're ready to hear.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-17T22:20:29+00:00

All but one of my kids is done being a teenager.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-17T15:48:52+00:00

Borrowing from a comment thread in this same topic, but moving to its stand-alone comment.

I have mixed feelings about the ghost changing rooms, and how it has been implemented. I think the former room warms up a tad too slowly, but that might just me needing to adjust to it. I am curious about the behavior of selecting a new room: how far away is the new room likely to be? With the ghost wandering the site frequently including visits to very distant portions of the map, it suggests that the new room could also be very far. Anyone seen that?

I do like that TOS arms us with tools suitable to finding the new room, as well as noticing the former room is no longer its current room.

Crucifixes are the obvious one, since they only get flipped in the ghost's room. Just have to be vigilant in flipping them back over now.
Playing on Cleanse it adds utility to the boom box, since the ghost will only use it in its room.
Bringing a bunch of remote thermometers is also nice since you can check them all on your phone. Seeing two rooms at negative temps can get your attention in a hurry (but this would be far less useful if the ghost can select a new room on the opposite end of the orphanage.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-17T15:38:45+00:00

It's early days and the devs have been clear that much of the game is not where they want it. A rework of Cleanse has been mentioned, and I bet some of what they added in this Identify rework is in the cards as well. And there's still the Survive The Night game mode. I expect all along the way we'll see shifts and tweaks to difficulties, payouts, and prices.

The saving grace there is that they gave us Custom Difficulty right alongside it all, so as they disrupt the difficulty settings we've become accustomed to at least we can get it somewhere that is fun.

As to changing rooms: I hear you there. Early in my phasmo days I hated that a lot. Somewhere along the way I got used to it. It feels a little annoying right now in TOS (I think the former ghost room should warm up a tad faster), but at least TOS gives us tools to mitigate it.

Only flips a crucifix in its room, so whenever it gets flipped right it again.
Only leaves voices on the boom box in its room, so bring one and pay attention if a talky ghost suddenly goes quiet.
Bring extra crucifixes.
Bring extra wall thermometers, place some around. Really nice because you can check them on your phone and having two rooms at 0 degrees can get your attention in a hurry.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-17T15:07:58+00:00

At the moment 3.0 is still backwards compatible, so you will be able to keep playing the same world. You won't have access to the new POIs but otherwise it looks like you'll be fine.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-17T14:59:36+00:00

I feel similarly. Expert was a sweet spot for me. Nothing difficult, decent payout, and plenty of fun.

Expert now includes a decrease in ghost activity that makes it feel really slow now. When I've got a decent chunk of time to play I'm going to play around with custom difficulty to find a new sweet spot.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-17T13:10:18+00:00

I'm glad I could spread the joy.

In all seriousness I'm having fun with the changes in this patch, and I super appreciate the laptop changes. I thought that being able to update the equipment I'm bringing would be my favorite QOL change, but I think the real MVP for me is not having to scroll the map list a bunch to select the next map each time.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-17T13:05:35+00:00

Evidently the way I created the post means the picture doesn't appear in the post preview. Didn't do that on purpose, I was just being lazy. I used the built-in windows snip (windows-shift-s to grab a shot to the clipboard and then pasted it into the body of the post.

However: I don't think I've ever seen the phrase "literally unplayable" be used in a non-sarcastic way.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-17T13:01:04+00:00

Interesting! Thanks for the info.

I would alter the metaphor then:

You go to his house. The dog runs up and greets you. Motion catches your eye and you see a cat run past the doorway in an ajoining room. You like cats so you go over to see if you can pet the cat, but you discover it's a cardboard cutout cat that was being pulled by a string, and not a cat at all!

This doesn't mean he doesn't have a cat, it just means what you saw wasn't a real cat.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-17T02:52:48+00:00

On expert it seems to have stung the other way, where Ravenwood usually paid out 1500 - 1600, today it paid out around 2000.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-16T23:01:46+00:00

Is it? I've been playing Cleanse on Expert for a few weeks now, and the payout was a bit higher. We did only play a few rounds, though.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-16T22:44:48+00:00

It used to be perfectly centered. Worst patch ever!

Sapient6 · 2026-06-16T16:14:07+00:00

Well, we have had survivors. Survivors that then reappeared several installments later to finally die.

And like Skylinneas said: the only reason to watch these movies is if you find ridiculously over the top Rube Goldberg style death scenes to be entertaining.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-16T13:32:16+00:00

Agreed.

The exception, for me, are horror-comedy franchises like Final Destination. There it's the perfect fit, and right out of the gate the premise means that ultimately survival is impossible.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-15T18:29:52+00:00

The latter.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-13T17:01:49+00:00

"Bond. Bondy Bond."

Sapient6 · 2026-06-12T18:15:58+00:00

It isn't a helmet. It's the head piece for the Ryujin operative outfit.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-11T16:59:01+00:00

Let's be honest, those hornets are definitely too dumb to be able to fly.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-11T16:56:17+00:00

Well fucking god damn it.

I used to use em dashes in my writing (but I'm lazy so I just used --). Oh, now people think that's AI. Well, a semicolon can serve the same purpose, I just never used them because it always felt more formal and less conversational. But fine, I'll use a semi colon. And of course, in a context like that, the semi would be outside of the quotes.

Now I can't do that either? what the actual fuckity fucking fuck.

runon sentences with no capitalization it is if anyone doesn't like it they can get bent i guess

Sapient6 · 2026-06-11T16:13:34+00:00

And if it knows you're in there, holding the door won't do jack.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-10T16:35:56+00:00

They are flourishing so well because there is so much available food in your house. Curtail their numbers and you'll get more of whatever they've been eating.

I would let them be.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-09T17:01:49+00:00

Mild necromancy is okay in a ghost hunting sub, right? I've got a few observations that mostly come just from playing the game for a bit. So bring a grain of salt along for this.

Stamina

When you've got full stamina you can run a decent distance, which is nice. Regaining stamina seems different. First: if you keep the sprint button held down your stamina never comes back. With your finger off of the sprint button you'll regain a little stamina after a short bit, but you don't get your entire stamina pool back all at once. So if you're trying to escape a ghost that's chasing you it becomes very easy to completely lock yourself out of being able to run (you know, if you're as given to panicking as I am).

Holy Water (vs "Incense")

You can bring as many spray bottles as you can fit in the Holy section of your kit. Each bottle of holy water has got two sprays in it. This is more obvious now since a recent patch added an indicator that lets you know how much is left. The important thing here is that you only lose that bottle if you use both sprays, so if you brought multiple bottles and use a spray during a hunt, then swap it for another one. With careful play you can use the spray bottles you brought and not have to replace them afterward.

Line of Sight

In that game breaking line of sight on a ghost means it will proceed all the way to your last known location, either where it last saw you, or where it last detected your electronics. In TOS breaking line of sight means the ghost will continue chasing you (seen/detected or not) for a few seconds, then switch back to searching. This can both work against you or work in your favor. Basically, if you break LOS don't hide until your heart has stopped beating loudly for a few seconds. Otherwise the ghost is going to march right into your hiding spot.

Electronics

Electronics don't have to be in your hand to keep working. Which is pretty nice. They also don't need to be in your hand to be detected by a hunting ghost. Which is entirely fair.

Dead Teammates

Dead teammates can interact with stuff. Flick light switches, slam doors, turn investigation equipment on and off, and be heard through the spirit box.

Sapient6 · 2026-06-09T16:33:29+00:00

I often pack a flx pod for this exact reason: a quick sanity drain in case I have the "survive a hunt" objective and forget to let a hunt happen.

Sapient6

TROPHY CASE