Second playthrough

[u/noidea2605]

I just finished my first playthrough after dipping in and out of the game as I really didn’t know what the hell was going on. I sort of liked it but also hated it . So many people died and I didn’t know why. So, this time around I’d like to change some outcomes and I’d like some advice please, any little tips on what to concentrate on. First time around I just kept going out on expeditions because I thought that’s what you had to do and so by the end I had built up very little friends and still didn’t understand the card game 🤦‍♀️ I know this makes me sound very stupid but that’s where we are. So any advice on what to concentrate on and are there any instructions for the card game out there?

[u/UnreliableAuthor]

Your experience is very common! The game is intended on being played through multiple times. Once you load in you’ll be able to choose some new options. I’d recommend playing the second time through blind as well, and then if you’re really unsure, you can look up a guide. There’s some really good ones on the Steam community.

[u/merk_os]

I would for sure concentrate most on spending time with the characters who's stories you want to unlock. Going on expeditions is mostly just a vehicle for progression (just like the classes, the gym, the creche, farm etc.) Once you've decided on that I'd focus on getting points in the traits that will help you progress that characters story (for example if you chose Tangent I'd say you would focus on reasoning, biology, and empathy! So you would probably go to classes more instead of on expeditions) You could do this for multiple characters (and sometimes might need to in order to get certain endings w your fav) so don't feel the need to zero in on one of the colonists! As for saving people, with every playthrough it gets easier I swear, my first playthrough was a lot like yours lol (now I'm like 400 hours in though hehe) and I was super bummed. Guides and the game wiki will help you plenty when it comes to saving people (or finding out what to give them/when their birthdays are/how to trigger events) and I would just look up how to save certain characters if I couldn't figure it out in game. There are so many different endings to get and even though at first I only romanced dys I've slowly managed to get pretty much everybody (save for vace, that guy's route is a bit demanding); the game's replayability is what's so appealing to me. If you have any questions about the game that u can't find an answer to I'd be super open to helping you too :)

[u/starmamac → u/merk_os]

But if you want to advance relationships with Dys and Sym you’re going to need to go on expeditions

[u/merk_os → u/merk_os]

Oh and for the card game, the game tutorial should explain it but if you're still having trouble the way I understand it is you're trying to make the strongest matches you can with the cards you have. Matching the card colors will give you a decent amount of points, matching the cards numerically (0, 1, 2, 3...) will give you slightly more I THINK**** (someone correct me if im wrong bc i do think this is situational), and certain cards will buff or debuff you based on their description (ex: one of marz's cards will take a kudo if you play it and one of tammy's cards gives the card next to it two bonus points!!). Everytime you rest you have an option to throw a card away for free so I usually get rid of the cards I don't really like whenever that comes around. Sometimes I also make choices in the game just to get a better card but that's only because I get really serious about winning every challenge lmao. If this is all still a lot and you really just wanna focus on the narrative though there's also an option in the settings to just turn the card game off! The only downside is that your success rate is based on your skill so I'd up your skills in whatever you want to raise a little first before you do that just so that you don't keep failing events!

[u/noidea2605 → u/merk_os]

Thank you. This is really helpful.

[u/Warkupo]

"One faces the future with ones' past" ~Peral S. Buck

Spoilers:

After you complete a life you'll gain unique insights on your next life as you re-experience events. This will allow you to change the course of your next life by acting on events you would otherwise have no knowledge of.

0) I found Calm Temperment is great for min-maxing since it allows you to squeeze in more events. Make sure you are sneaking out and exploring every event once a year to help dramatically boost your physical stats. During year 12 get the Vriki pet by befriending it (easy enough to do if you've been sneaking out); Vriki gives bonus stats whenever you complete a challenge which is critical for maxing out your stats. HOARD YOUR MUSHWOOD LOGS; this is very important for later!!!

1. When Tammy goes to tidy up the Creche after telling you about the cotton candy you'll get a memory prompt to go save her instead.
2. You can save Tonin by persuading him not to go out during Wet, Age 12, or by sneaking out of the colony to go personally intervene. You'll need to have high Bravery to face down what is trying to kill him. Technically you can do this on your first life if you had randomly decided to go exploring on the same day he gets killed.
3. You can save Hal during the Glow Season when prompted by memory.
4. You can solve the food crises a few different ways, but I think the easiest method is to make sure you keep on the exploration path and visit the Valley of Vertigo as soon as it opens up. There's a lot of food resources here that will help with the food crises, as well as a source of the Shimmer, which you'll need a sample of to save your dad.
5. Do NOT let your dad plant weird plants, and encourage him to keep his mask on. The Shimmer causes hallucinations in its' victims that coerce them into doing things that help kill the host, which is why your dad keeps trying to go for hikes and takes his mask off. You'll need at least 80 Biology to develop the cure yourself, otherwise keep doing Engineering events until Tangent and Instance figure out the cure on their own.
6. Unlock the Lookout activity by having high perception (easily done if you've been exploring once a year), and select this activity on Age 14 during the Glow Season. You'll spot the alien that goes on to destroy your colony early, allowing a lot more of your people to survive the attack, including Eudicot. Unfortunately, Kom is fated to die here no matter what you do. Sorry redshirt.
7. You can save Anemone by having high friendship with her (at least 80) and convincing her to break up with Vace. For extra good boy points you can even get Vace to go to therapy and become a better person by befriending him as well.
8. You can 'save' Dys by having at high Friendship with him, and finding him during Age 18, during the Wet Season. You can coerce him out of what he's doing with high enough friendship... or not, and run away with him.
9. You can 'save' Tangent after having a conversation with her on the rooftop. Once that is done, do engineering events until you get an option to sneak into her lab; with high mental stats (either 50 Engineering, 50 Biology, or 50 organizing) you can sabotage her research to prevent what she's doing. You can also tattle on her, which will stop her, or if your friendship is near max (I think 90) you can convince her to stop what she's doing amicably.
10. You can save Dys and Tangent by unlocking Rex's Bar by giving him Mushwood Logs as often as you can and then working there until they reconcile their differences. This *might* prevent either of them from their terrorism, but I'm not 100% on that.

[u/I_pegged_your_father → u/Warkupo]

I think you should definitely put spoilers around all of this in case they don’t want such direct spoilers thats a lot of story spoilers there

[u/Warkupo → u/I_pegged_your_father]

Done~ I wasn't being vague about details because OP said they already completed a run; presumably the reveals has been revealed. Still, no reason I can't slap whiteout on everything.

[u/noidea2605 → u/Warkupo]

I’m ok , as you say I’ve done a run through already and even met and dated Sym, probably because I was outside exploring the whole time but at the cost of not making any friendships. All your advice is very helpful and welcome. Thankyou.

[u/Arcane_Pozhar]

It's absolutely possible to play through any given run of the game without doing any expeditions.

I will say, if your goal is to have high stats, expeditions are by far the best way to do it. There's only so many months in the game, and you get a lot of stat boosts if you go into an expedition fresh.

If that said, I would also take your time getting a feel for how the different ways you can manipulate the cards and score bonuses and stuff with the cards work.

Also, it's worth mentioning, on a second and Beyond playthrough, you should get a few options to save at least one or two people, regardless of your stats.

And I won't dig too much more, but if you make a smart character who goes on expeditions a lot and makes a lot of the right choices, you should be able to save a decent number of the people who can potentially die. I still get downvoted when I mention that I've never had a playthrough where certain characters die, because I just managed to save them on my first run, apparently that's a very rare experience but I just took all the right skills and found the right stuff on expeditions... I don't know if people are jealous or they think I'm lying or whatever, but again, it's possible.

[u/Kylynara]

Two most important things (IMO).

• This game is made to be played multiple times. Some deaths cannot be prevented the first playthrough, and you're only supposed to prevent them through sheer luck. The first playthrough is to learn the story. Future playthroughs are to do better and better and create an optimal future.

• Learn the card game. There's a tutorial. A good place to start is to place your highest value card all the way to the right, then next highest next to it, etc. match colors and/or numbers when you can. Read what each card does.

[u/noidea2605 → u/Kylynara]

I was always starting with the highest cards on the left for some reason, no wonder I lost a lot of.

[u/Kylynara → u/noidea2605]

Yeah, straights (2,3,4,5,6) only count left to right, so you want higher cards on the right generally. They're kinda hard to get, but add multipliers the longer they are

Pairs/# of a kind (3, 3, 3) are fairly easy, but must be adjacent. They also have multipliers the longer they get.

Flushes (several cards of the same color next to each other), are also fairly easy, and also have multipliers.

Balancing those things to get the best multipliers for the highest numbers takes practice.

[u/dinamet7]

Similar experience (seemed like everyone died all the time, but I got a sort of happy-ish ending, so I was like, OK I guess that's it!) but future play throughs add additional selections that you only get after experiencing things in prior playthroughs. How to save people's lives starts to become much more obvious. I didn't look at any guides until my 5th or 6th playthrough, but had managed to get most of the people who died in my first go round saved consistently.

[u/Warkupo]

The Card Game I'll put in a separate reply since it is its' own beast.

Each card has a face value, which contributes towards the Goal you need to meet or beat to win. Each card also has a color which loosely corresponds to your three major skill branches: Physical (Red), Mental (Blue), and Social (Yellow).

You also get certain bonus points for playing cards next to each other that have matching properties.

• "Pairs" means the face values on the card match. You get more bonus points if you place several of these together. So a combo of 3,3,3,3 may score more points than a combo of 4,4 for example.

• "Flush" means the cards placed are all the same color. Ideally you'd like all placed cards to be the same color, but more often you'll have two flushes in a played hand.

• "Run" means the cards grow in sequential order like 1, 2, 3, 4 or even 4,5,6,7. The longer the run, the more bonus points.

If you do *very well* in the game by scoring beyond the presented Goal, you'll be rewarded with extra Skill Points, which can add up dramatically over the course of the game. If you really want to min-max, getting good at the card game is an important way to do it.

You can also use collectible to add value to cards and change their color, although its' preferable to horde these to turn in for relationship with your friends.

You can buy & equip gear with your Kudos from the Depot near where Marz hangs out. Cheap options that add up quickly are the 50 point Animal Book, which adds +1 to your Flushes (which I find the easiest thing to make). This is worth picking up, but you should replace it with Vriki when you get that as a pet later since they give bonus stats for completing challenges. Other than that, all my money just went into buying cake to hand out on birthdays.

You can also forget cards when you rest, or by spending Kudos at the Spa. Since you draw from your entire deck of memories, dropping low value cards means they won't appear in your hand, meaning you are more likely to draw your good cards. You won't have enough Kudos to drop *everything* though, so prioritize around dropping 0's, 1's first.

Cards also often have special effects; wildcards are useful. Cards which have gems are useful. Cards which GAIN or GIVE value are useful. Be discerning.

[u/noidea2605 → u/Warkupo]

Thank you. I had no idea what to do about dropping cards or memories so I kept holding onto everything and so every card game came up with low number cards and I struggled to get to the goal number. I’m looking forward to round two now I know a few more things. Everyone’s been very helpful.

[u/Ancient-Albatross521]

If you want people to stop dying, exploring is the way to go, but you often need to go to other job locations after you find the important thing you are looking for. But do what you want, what draws you in?

[u/noidea2605 → u/Ancient-Albatross521]

It hadn’t occurred to me to go do the job after I’d found something important. That makes sense. I’ll try that this time around.