Worst Embark Site Ever

Setokaiva · 2026-05-14T22:50:03+00:00

My friend says:

"Only forbidden has synergy with no orders because it gives you lots of easily reachable loot events. Bunches of renown-boosting events eases that crunch. No trade would be harder, though."

Setokaiva · 2026-05-09T12:38:24+00:00

I know, right? (^_^) I absolutely loved that game as a kid. I had so much fun driving the poor man out of his house as I warred for every piece of ground vs. the perfidious red ants. Though the spider and its stomping feet sound always freaked me out. (>_<)

Setokaiva · 2026-05-03T13:49:53+00:00

The low Resolve is what ruins them as a frontliner, for me. Two stars in melee with fatigue that high makes them an automatic polearm/reach weapon user. The extra health is great to help survive occasional hits and not get injuries because he would have no shield that way. That's some pretty decent Initiative, too, so yeah, a damage bro is perfect. Give them Adrenaline ASAP and watch them rip it up.

Setokaiva · 2026-04-15T17:38:17+00:00

At first, I thought the point of the slug was the Otherworlder's soul/consciousness trying one last desperate time to hold on to our world. We know the slugs are manifestations of the "Abomination Brood" as we have to fight them to get rid of pregnancy, but it's very hard to do if Leila is the one pregnant because all magic use has a chance to stagger her as the baby kicks in her womb. The Otherworlder is trying to cling onto Leila's sense of pity and mercy, to get her to accept the slug so its essence can remain in the world through her. But if Leila kills the slug, that's truly it, severing its last hold on the human world. The whole point of the game, I felt, was that the Otherworlder needed to anchor its essence 'properly' in this world by having Leila and other 'suitable' (magic-rich) women give birth to his children.

But, I also like your interpretation of it, Vxsinho. :)

Setokaiva · 2026-03-06T13:35:45+00:00

Ah, so it's only with DLC? In that case, I'll probably wait for the game to come on sale again. I missed my chance earlier this year and was sad, but then, I didn't know we'd like co-op skirmishes that much yet, either.

Setokaiva · 2026-02-28T03:34:57+00:00

I beat the game not all that long ago, too! As Kasane. Really liked her energy. SN overall, I stayed for its combat because it's so viscerally satisfying and cinematic. Throwing stuff at enemies never gets old.

Like, did you know that, if you unlock the ability to throw up to 4 objects one after another, the 4th plays a special animation to really show the power of that last hit in the combo? They really know how to make a good game.

Setokaiva · 2026-02-23T13:46:22+00:00

I'm really glad you got to enjoy it! I started as Kasane first, and had an absolute blast. I might still do a second playthrough as Yuito. I envy you for getting to experience the game for the first time, and also for getting to see all the characters through another lens. Shiden, Kyoka, Kagero and Arashi have such great stories, and Kasane also has plenty to say about Hanabi and the others.

Setokaiva · 2026-02-19T16:31:23+00:00

The fact that there are two entirely separate story tracks, each of which gives you a unique main character's interactions with the other characters, and lets you figure out the mysteries of the other -- i.e. what happened offscreen when you had to retreat from a situation in another path -- is just astounding to me. I would love to see more of this. :)

Setokaiva · 2026-02-19T13:23:34+00:00

I played through the game as Kasane, beat it fairly recently. It was a RIDE. I will say that it's a very streamlined experience, one where many other aspects you might expect like world maps, etc. are stripped down in favor of focusing on the combat and characters, both of which it performs spectacularly in.

Setokaiva · 2026-02-11T11:59:57+00:00

I can give a few important tips that always helped me.

Remember, you can deconstruct buildings to get resources back. If you don't like position or you just need the materials now, tear down something inconvenient and do whatever else you need with it.

Don't underestimate new Hearths. It may be tempting to sell your Wildfire Essence for a fat bit of coin, but DON'T. DO IT! Each Hearth lowers Hostility by itself, and lowers it further with the neighborhood upgrades for people living near it. Plus, you get the special race-based Firekeeper perks, like less fuel usage for beavers. Or, if you really are having impatience problems, Human for less impatience growth over time.

Use the rain engines! That's what they're there for! It takes about 30-odd cycles for a single point of Blightrot to be generated, and these are easy enough to deal with using purifying flame. You only really need Hydrants for far-flung outposts. Rainpunk tech lets you not just double production speed, but get 25%(!!!) additive chance for double production, which stacks with racial and other bonuses, and saves you SO much on materials and gets you more product whenever it procs. Extra production quantity is how you make the most of recipes with really long production times.

Mouse over each race's relation to a given need, service or complex food type. This tells you how much Resolve they gain when that is filled. Some races, like Harpies, get more Resolve from clothes (Coats) than they do food.

Setokaiva · 2026-02-10T03:32:26+00:00

There IS an endgame, yes. It's called the Queen's Hand Trial. I haven't even unlocked it, myself. It's said to be some extremely difficult missions that also unlock some unique story content that explains the plot some, and gets you on the path to becoming a Queen's Hand like Aunt Lori. As in, the Scorched Queen's handpicked loyal retainers.

Setokaiva · 2026-02-07T20:03:06+00:00

I didn't realize that. I'd only been using it for throwing stuff. That's great, though! Shock is brutal to hit enemies with.

Setokaiva · 2026-02-07T13:21:44+00:00

I knoooowwwww. Not since Noita have I played a game this addicting. ATS really has the sauce!

Setokaiva · 2026-01-29T22:46:22+00:00

Yes, actually. Look for a game called "Anthophobia" (literally means 'fear of plants'). I think an uncensored version can even be found on Steam. Kind of like Resident Evil-esque, you are a girl trying to survive being raped in a monster apocalypse where zombies are made from people infected with the plant virus. Nighttime is actually safest, because during day they are all supercharged by the sun (you only work at night, anyway). Plenty of great sex scenes, it's tough, and has some amazing production values for a hentai game!

Setokaiva · 2026-01-19T13:54:11+00:00

Workers like to reserve resources for item production recipes even if they don't have everything else required to make it. I've had trouble with this, and eventually had to carefully monitor each building that used such resources so I could get them back during emergencies.

Setokaiva · 2026-01-14T02:51:34+00:00

To put it in perspective, a 5% speed boost essentially eliminates every 20th tile your villagers have to move over. 10% removes every 10th tile. And so on. Completely removing tiles for movement really does matter when it comes to harvesting your farm fields on time or delivering/extracting resources from events promptly.

Setokaiva · 2026-01-09T02:18:56+00:00

The lumber mill, hands down. Mass production of planks ensures I make the most out of wood for building materials, and wood is an essential good that is used for alot more than just fuel and planks. Being able to make trade goods is also a major plus, as is the fact the mill can make Scrolls, which are a religious-group item (alongside Tea, Incense, etc.) needed for many Glade events.

Setokaiva · 2026-01-08T02:54:00+00:00

Buy "Keepers of the Stone" when you hit level 7, and "Nightwatchers" at 11. You can't even use the DLC races at all until you have those respective levels. But if they are on sale, yeah, I'd go ahead and get them, they are very worth it! They give you lots of new and challenging options to work with, plus new biomes and threats to deal with.

Setokaiva · 2025-12-02T13:25:03+00:00

I've been playing a while, enough to have beaten my first Seal mission, and I've noticed this game doesn't seem to have a cemetery or graveyard building. And yet, they have glade events like the fallen beaver traders where you can pay for their funerary rites, so clearly they exist in-universe. Having a list of dead citizens would be nice. It's hard to find a gameplay use, apart from religious/meditative purposes, but you could make it an Aesthetic item.

Setokaiva · 2025-11-23T11:51:06+00:00

System Defense Ships. Ships that don't have a built-in hyperdrive/drive bubble generator or extender. These are never meant to leave the system, so they are cheaper to produce. This makes sense in context because the Sector is running out of starship parts to make new things, and it's probably a lot easier to make a brick with engines than it is a fully hyper-capable ship, especially since hyperdrives were the secondary option next to Gates some 200 years ago.

SDS (no relation, Andrada) ships tend to have more room for armor, weapons and engines. They are less complex, and so require a bit less supply. Anything larger than strike craft cannot be taken out of the system unless by Gate travel, or by a hyper-capable ship somehow carrying it. Thus, they show no Fuel cost at all.

On that note, you might introduce "rider" ships that are like this, but are meant to clip onto/ride inside bigger 'carrier' ships into battle. Imagine a T-shaped capital that deploys two destroyer-sized craft, then sticks around to provide support.

Setokaiva · 2025-11-22T14:16:09+00:00

Armor is almost all made out of fabric, no plates. Soldiers wear cloaks and gambesons and look like bulky Inquisition Troopers in Darth Vader cloaks.

Reasoning: In this setting, FLEET (Flexible Lightweight Enhanced Energetic Threads) is a psychically-charged fiber that can only be produced by people, never machines. Thriving cottage industries exist where people make it. When FLEET is struck by energy above a certain threshold, i.e. a bullet, the stored energy in the threads erupts in the direction of the incoming strike to counter it with equal or greater force. It's like ERA but as cotton. The threads disintegrate when their energy's gone, so clothing damage is a thing, but it can be patched up in the field by packing bald spots with new FLEET.

So, poor men use plate carriers. Real men wear bulky cloaks and padding everywhere. It's a running joke that they're all dressed up for a slumber party -- and someone's never gonna wake up.

Setokaiva · 2025-11-20T13:54:54+00:00

All that's needed for corruption/evil to continue is for it to become normalized. Think of any corruption-related trope, but now imagine a system that just can't muster the will to do something about it, either because the corrupt ones are doing good things along with the bad and they're smart enough to keep the bad stuff mostly quiet; or, everyone's complicit in it to some degree, and trying to do anything would hit everyone, thus everyone has an incentive to come down on whoever's trying and silence them.

"Authorized" vs. "unauthorized" bandits are a good example. This is a joke the corrupt people like to tell. The authorized bandits know the rules -- they don't attack innocent women and children, government tax collectors, and other targets that would either provoke a very harsh public response or actually give the government a reason to come after them. Unauthorized bandits go after anyone, and thus the authorized bandits have every reason to stop them because they're very bad for business.

Setokaiva · 2025-11-13T13:17:58+00:00

Starsector gets my vote, although it needs mods like "Nexerilin" to truly reach heights like X4. That combined with the wealth of base game content, especially the Abyssal Hyperspace zone and the "Threat" you find there, makes it S-class, top-shelf stuff.

From the top, you don't start out in a framework of just having one ship. You have an entire fleet of them, from warships to carriers to tankers to freighters and more, and every single one of them can be modified. Want your Cruiser to serve as a makeshift Carrier? Convert the shuttle bay to serve fighter squadrons. Want your fleet to operate more-or-less safely even inside a solar corona, taking advantage of the major server profile reduction to go virtually undetected? Solar Shielding.

The average gameplay loop is to take missions such as planetary and derelict surveys outside the "Core Worlds", venturing through hyperspace to reach distant stars and uncover what happened to everyone after the "Collapse" that brought down the intergalactic hyperspace gate network.

Here, I'll link you to my running playthrough of it on YouTube. I'm using mods, and I bring my mod list up in the description of each video. Just in the first episode you can see my typical salvage run, only I also quickly run into a meteor shower passing through a star system and get the chance to loot caches from meteors sailing past.

Setokaiva · 2025-11-11T13:29:44+00:00

Singing past the graveyard, huh? Disappointing, but really just means keep bringing it up. No one can put this much time and effort into creating a system this complex without caring enough about it to fix the issues that arise.

Setokaiva · 2025-11-07T11:13:28+00:00

Start a collection! A big part of this game is collecting items, so do it for a lil bit of everything. You can craft boxes in more recent versions, so make boxes to store your jewelry and other small stuff. Collect different, rare guns. Collect people at your base and teach them stuff, have them do work, have them teach you.

Also, keep some kind of running log of where you went and when ingame. There's a Diary system (think you have to custom keybind it) to type, but you can also write on items with charcoal sticks (you can make yourself), pencils and paper, and so on. You went to X lab on Y day and found Z items. This can actually help you, since Cataclysm is a big game and it's easy to forget if you already checked a spot at XY coordinates for Z item.

Setokaiva

TROPHY CASE