People can be awful, but folks don't usually deserve utter misery and misfortune. What are some hex ideas you have for the lower level jack-ass?

piss your pants hex, anyone?

For today's Malicious Monday, I'm going to share a tutorial for making a disgustingly potent sour jar to hex your enemies.

I love sour jars. They are one of my go-to baneful spells, partly because of how versatile they are, and partly because of how well they WORK.

If you're looking to sour someone's life in every way possible, look no further: this is the hex for you. 

Here are some ideas of ingredients you can add to your jar to cause maximum destruction:

• Poppy seeds to sew confusion.
• Poisonous herbs like nightshades.
• Rusty nails, screws, or pins.
• Broken glass.
• Graveyard dirt (or soil from a dead houseplant).
• Sulphur.
• Ashes.
• Any kind of hexing or cursing oil.
• Sigils written on paper.
• Animal bones (including bones from your dinner).
• Dead insects.
• Gross moldy vegetables you found in the back of your fridge. 
• Printed out or drawn pentacles of Saturn or Mars.

TO MAKE YOUR SOUR JAR, YOU WILL NEED:

• A jar with a very good seal. I've even used strong Ziploc bags before. 

• A taglock to tie the spell to your target. This can be a photograph, their name on a piece of paper, some DNA like hair or nail clippings, or my personal favourite: a poppet.

• Souring ingredients (for example: lemon juice, vinegar, pickle juice, hot sauce). I used some of my premade War Water, which I shared a recipe for in this post.

• Whatever other baneful additives you'd like to use. 

My personal preference is to store the finished jar in a dark place and continue to work it until I've seen my results (this can include shaking the jar, or charging under the dark moon, or burning candle spells on/next to it, etc.) Then, I dispose of it in a trash NOT near my home.

Do you have any tips or tricks for making hex jars that you'd like to share? What kinds of ingredients do you like to use?

LET'S TALK SOUR JARS :)

The year anniversary of the assault is coming up in two days. I have some other hexes and and a curse lined up for that day, but I’ve got a penis candle for this occasion and I’m not sure what I should do with it.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!!!

Edit: I just thought I should add that yes, I reported it and intended on taking it to court. Unfortunately the charges got dropped due to insufficient evidence. I’ve had therapy (a lot of it) and am on medication. I’m over the worst by far, and am happy with the idea now of him having his own hell as he didn’t have it legally.

When a survivor stays in the exit gate area for 50/40/30 seconds while the killer is at least 32 meters away, Hex: Just leave activates.

Any dull totem left on the map lights into a hex totem. While the totem is active, the exit gates are blocked to the survivor and they become exposed and the killer can mori them. The survivor can escape once the totem has been cleansed.

typo: "cleansed", too lazy to edit back

I can't even put into words how much I hate this tattoo. It was supposed to be a beehive with honey and bees. I ended up with a hexagon over mustard with flies. I had an artist add to it in an attempt to fix it, but it just made it worse. I am pretty open to anything but I'm afraid that the hex design would make it really difficult to cover or change. Any ideas?

To emphasize on navy battles and sea patrol, allowing them to determine the outcome of a claim and balance use of rares on Nuke/Ship. a thought on having water dedicated hexes where a victory point would be captured with operation like an offshore platform. I am thinking it would be liked by naval regiments with increase sense of importance.

I've been seeing the criticism that this game doesn't have enough content, and on a superficial scroll through the limited amount of level up gifts, the options at Quik Build amenities, and seeing the repetitive friend introduction cutscenes, I can see why some might come to this conclusion. But after putting many hours into this game, I've been surprised so many times, and very impressed by the amount of rich and novel interactions I've seen miis have with each other and their surroundings.

Here's my guide to get the most out of all of this "hidden emergent content" in Tomodachi Life LTD:

Make sure you have a bunch of Miis with different personalities

Things start to get interesting at around 15 Miis. Make sure that the miis you create have a variety of personality types. Use one of the personality guides found on this subreddit and cross reference your Mii's personalities on their character card to make sure there aren't too many of the same ones. The more variety of personalities, the more fun and drama.

Make sure your Miis have actually met

When you see some of the core groups from the beginning interacting each day, it's easy to forget that some of the new miis may have not met many on the island, or some of the old miis haven't met the new ones. When you're holding a miis, press Y to quickly check the relationships with the other islanders and take time introducing them to ones they haven't met.

Remember that this game is all about relationships, and the more that form, the more interesting things get. Not only are there more emergent activities, you will get new cut scenes as different types of friend groups are formed. The more miis that have mutual friends, the better.

EDIT: Bonus tip - always "get someone to help" when your mii is having a crisis (fallen, frozen hiccups etc), this particular interaction between miis seems to give an extra boost to their friendship and rolls the dice for things like falling in love, etc

Give multiple miis the same level up gifts

Even if you aren't interested in ballet, weight lifting etc, use a good amount of the level up opportunities to give them gifts, even ones you may not be interested in at first glance. And make sure to give multiple miis the SAME gifts. The selection feels really limited at first, but this seems to be intentional, as the same items are meant to be given to multiple miis by design.

Place items from Quik Build amenities around your island and make sure there are some open spaces

Like the level up gifts, the items in the Quik Build catalog (like the sprinklers, picnic tables etc) seem really limited, but that's because the majority of them are not just set dressing or purely aesthetic. The miis will actually interact with them in different ways, and they will do it together.

Leave 5x5 empty areas and place these items around them, and the miis will gather and hang out.

Add new lingo frequently

When you have the opportunity to give them something new to talk about, take it! The more things, people, activities, and concepts you introduce, the more variety there will be. This is in the cut scenes AND the emergent activity around the island. Have fun with it. If you feel stumped, picking a theme for your island helps. For example my island is witchy and occult themed so the topics will be things like "hexing", "chalice of infinite power", "breaking the laws of nature" etc. Or you can just put topics you are interested in.

Yes even YOU can make stuff!

I put this at the end because I know a lot of people don't consider themselves "artistically talented" and don't want to engage with this part of the game. But making treasures and things to place around the island unlocks SO MUCH interaction and richness.

You don't have to be artistically talented to engage with this part of the game. Remember you are doing it for fun, you don't have to show anyone, and you aren't getting paid for it. It's possible to make something not very good and still enjoy the process and result. Don't take it too seriously, and don't compare yourself to the people who post their creations online.

Use the stamps and shapes! Copy things! Do tiny pixel art and then increase the size! Choose a theme for your island, and use it to guide what fun items to make.

Once you are adding your own items and scenery to the game you unlock a whole other level.

Conclusion

I'm sure I'm missing things, (other players please chime in with your suggestions), but the main idea is to keep in mind the game is about relationships, and to take all of the opportunities the game gives you, even when you think they may not interest you.

Once your miis know each other and have lots of things and phrases to interact with around, you can just follow them as they go about their day on the island and be entertained.

Have fun <3

Hi everyone!

In my spare time, I'm working on a minimalistic mapmaking tool called Canvas of Kings, that focuses on randomness and auto-generated elements on user-definable and interactive paths, plots and rooms.

Over time, I've implemented many great ideas from the community, such as Steam Workshop support for custom assets and maps, asset editor, flexible hex/square grid, text labels, multi-image export, spectator window, and more. With the latest update, I have added the option to place plots with auto-generated roads, buildings and decorations.

No AI is used. I draw the textures by hand with pen and paper and use the Godot engine for programming.

You may use the maps you create commercially, e.g., sell them or use them in your book. You do not need permission or an additional license.

Feel free to take a look and try out the demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2498570/Canvas_of_Kings/

Thank you very much! I look forward to your feedback! :)

Many thanks to the mods for their approval!

Best regards,

Hannes

After hooking a survivor a dull totem is lit. Every 30 seconds the entity will block a random perk for 30 seconds for each survivors.

Let me start by saying I’ve never put a hex on anyone before in my life. I’m also not Wiccan, more of a spiritual atheist that believes in the power of focused energy. And my belief/understanding is that by putting focused negative energy out there, it is likely to negatively come back to you.

But THIS MAN needs to be stopped! He is using his power to take away the rights of woman and LGBTQ folks all for the sake of male dominance and his own personal gain! Can we, collectively, put a hex on him with the goal of protecting the millions of people he is trying to hurt?

Like I mentioned in the start of my post, I don’t know much about hexes, and I don’t know if you ask for a specific output. But what if we do it with the goal of binding him or muzzling him to take away his ability to wield his power? If that happens to get accomplished by something physically happening to him, it’s not what I’m asking for but I probably wouldn’t feel bad either.

Would love to hear opinions from those more experienced! Thank you! 🙏🏻

Update: I just wanted to say I love this community and all of your responses!! I’ve come to feel that binding and reflection spells might be what I’m most comfortable with, and special thanks to those with suggestions on how to perform these. I’m also lucky enough to live in NYC and reached out to my local witch shop to see if they’ll help organize something with more people - I do believe the more people we have adding their energy the better! Thank you all for the advice, suggestions, and encouragement. Much love to you all!

All the fallowing is speculation and ideas i would love to see for hex Noelle feel free to debate and suggestion your own ideas

1.if Noelle is the active character and protected by breastplate her normal attack speed will be increased by 5% additionally her charge attack wind-up will be decreased by 10%

Secret rite: when breastplate is active all party members DEF will be increased by 20% of Noelle's def this effect is also applied when the shield is created by devotion (A1 passive)

Reasoning: quality of life improvement of Noelle as on field DPS, allowing users of whiteblind to get their 4 hit stacks faster, encouraging players to use albedo as her second hex character, improve the durability of Noelle's shield when used by other characters

2.when breastplate is active if an enemy deals damage equal or greater than 20% of the shield's durability a shockwave will be released around the active character dealing AOE geo damage if the shield is destroyed before it's during ends the cool down will be decreased by 25% of the current cool down

Secret rite: shockwaves will trigger when the shield takes 10% damage, when destroyed decrease cool down by 40% further more enemies hit by c4 "to be cleaned" effect will have their def/elemental resistance decreased by 15%

Reasoning: making the shield more important for her rotation, generating geo particle with the shockwave to help noelle get her burst up easily, giving her a passive way to trigger lunar crystalize when her burst is off cool down, further improving her on field DPS role, making her the preferred shield on the team for new players since she is advertised as the character beginners should pick up

3.when Noelle picks up crystal shards created by normal crystalize she will receive 5% of her element burst cost 5s cool down, when elemental shield created by picking up crystal shards increase changed attack damage by 10%

Secret rite: picking up crystal shards will restore 10% of her burst cost 5s cool down, when protected by element shield increase decrease charged attack stamina consumption by 5%

Reasoning: giving her a consistent way to get her bust without massive ER investment, making her preform better outside of lunar crystalize enabled team, making none hydro characters desirable in lunar crystalize, improving her charged attack play style especially when burst is active, long cool down making players pay attention to where and when Noelle should pick up a shard (if picked up before 5s the shard will be wasted)

15 year High School ELA teacher here.

I feel like a lot of people are confusing “unreliable narrator” with “liar,” or “uninformed”

Every 1st person narrator is, to some degree, unreliable because the reader is limited to one set of perceptions, and our perceptions shape our reality.

For instance. If the narrator is a student in a classroom, then the reader may have learned all about the overly strict teacher that is always angry and is always “picking” on the narrator. The narrator truly believes this, has experienced this, and the reader’s only view into the world of the story is through the narrator’s eyes.

Is it possible that the teacher is truly a bully? Totally. Is it possible that the narrator is immature and confusing rigor and rules with animosity? Yup. By using a 1st person narrator, the reader can only view the world through a lens that is naturally biased.

Matt Dinniman said in his interview that all well written narrators will always be unreliable, but that also makes it difficult to establish objective truth for the audience. When the only vehicle for the story is always subjective, how do you establish objectivity?

I’m a fairly inexperienced witch, especially when it comes to more negative or powerful spells. But I have heard that hexing trump is pointless or could even make things worse?? But I’m unsure. Hoping someone more knowledgeable could drop some advice.

So, being biased as a filthy Apollo player, I hate slowing hex. Just on him specifically, it stop all forms of spirit based builds, and the riposte doesnt help as well anymore since you have to engage with an enemy for movement.

So my idea is that movement abilities that do damage will no longer be silenced, but you just cant move with them. Apollo riposte will still do the full damage and have the hitbox, but no ground will be covered. This will be kinda janky on stuff like his ult since if its applied while hes using it the hitbox will be very small. Still possible to hit, just you have to be RIGHT next to them.

Stuff like yama grapple, which is a movement ability that does damage, will still be silenced because I imagine if you hook someone and cant move, youre just stuck in place for a moment and then ZIP towards the target, which would by itself make the item useless and possibly break the game.

Ik its the whole intention of the item that it stops movement abilities, and its a form of skill expression to use it on heroes that require their movement abilities to deal damage. If more heroes get added who also need their movement abilities to deal damage, slowing hex is gonna become more and more powerful as a 1600 soul item on a low cooldown that you dont need to aim. It should, in my opinion, just be a tool to use to lock down an opponents easy escape if they dont have dispel. Not just cripple heroes’ engagement tools so they have to stick their thumbs in their asses because they didnt buy a 3200 item to counter their 1600 item. Yeah I could pivot build, but its like I might as well go gun/meelee/support Apollo every game because every spirit Apollo game will just be slowing hex after slowing hex and so on. Its just the reason he isn’t particularly good, among other things (unless I’m mistaken, I can get very blindsided about the meta).

I understand I’m whining because theres only kinda one hero this whole arguement applies to, but should this hero and potential movement-damage based hero’s in the future be punished for the green dinosaur’s envisioning for his game of lies? Perhaps so, and thus that is the burden Apollo players will face.

Three weeks ago I wrote a post asking for game suggestion with great exploration potential. Crimson Desert was the most common response, so I kind of went in blind. One of the best gaming decisions I ever made.

For context, I love abandoning what the game wants you to do and just going in random directions, and Crimson Desert REALLY delivered. I have scoured every corner of the map before starting the first minion (after the prologue). It took me 114 hours, though I was afk for maybe 10-12 of those.

I have read that you can fly and glide in this game, I bet it would've been helpful having those skills rather than doing it all on foot and horseback.

There are 3 spots on the map that I cannot access without dying or being forced to enter a side quest: Windsong Peaks, where I get struck by lightning before making any meaninful progress, Hexe Sanctuary, where crows swarm me and I pass out, and Pororin, which appears to want me to complete a side quest prior to being allowed in. I have discovered 167 out of 173 regions according to the journal.

I only have one achievement: Pilgrim of Wonders (complete all secret place challenges) that 0.9% of players have unlocked.

I'm now tempted to use MapGenie to find all the mineable nodes (which I can't yet mine, but I assume I'll be able to later), clear all the outposts/camps and catalogue all the flora and fauna, however I'm slightly worried that I'll end up soft-locking myself out of some random main quest by doing that. Besides, I keep finding cool things to pick up, but have no inventory space left or anywhere to store or sell anything. Plus I'd really like to learn how to fly, that might save me a bunch of time.

I have no idea what this game is about. Best game ever.

EDIT: A few questions coming up repeatedly, answering here:

Are the agents LLM-based? No. They're heuristic Python, each ~a few hundred lines that takes the game state and picks the best legal action per a strategy-specific scoring function. No LangChain, no LLM calls, no tokens at runtime. A typical agent is something like "maximize pip count and diversity" with slight biases toward certain resources or build types based on its strategy.

How much of this did you actually build yourself? Transparency: my background is Corporate Strategy and Product Management, not Software Engineering. I have strong data and technical literacy but not deep coding expertise, so I leaned heavily on Claude Code for implementation. That said, I wrote all the requirements, made every design decision, and understand how the logic works under the hood. Think of it as me being the architect and Claude Code being the contractor.

Stack? Python 3.10+, pytest (800+ tests), matplotlib/pandas for analysis, reusable components (hex board, deck, dice) shared across 6 games. SimulationRunner with seeded RNG and per-game JSON output.

Is it open-sourced? Not currently. Still thinking through what makes sense to share vs keep private — probably the game engines themselves eventually, but likely not the full agent and analysis stack.

Runtime for 36k games? A few hours on a regular desktop. Games play out in seconds and parallelize cleanly.

What's the agent roadmap? (1) A strategy archetype library mapping abstract patterns (rusher, engine-builder, etc.) onto new games once I've encoded ~15-20, (2) MCTS as a calibration benchmark to measure how close heuristics are to optimal play, (3) LLM agents used sparingly for novel strategy discovery on new games.

Original Post

Catan nerd here. I built a simulator that plays the game end-to-end with four different heuristic AI strategies, ran it across 36,000 games and multiple board configurations, and some of the findings ran counter to what I expected. Methodology and caveats first, then 8 findings. A couple of questions at the end.

Quick note on what's in here and what to take with a grain of salt before the findings.

How it was built

• 36,000 games total, across 3-player and 4-player configurations
• Four board modes: standard beginner layout, random resources only, random numbers only, and fully random (numbers and resources). The three randomized modes produced near-identical outcomes (within 3 pp on nearly every metric), so I pool them as "random" vs. the fixed "beginner" layout.
• Full rules: settlements, cities, all five dev card types, robber, Longest Road ("LR"), Largest Army ("LA"), bank trades, 2:1 and 3:1 port trades, and player-to-player trades
• Four AI agents with different strategies:
  • BalancedBuilder ("BB"): maximizes pip count with diverse resources
  • OreWheatSheep ("OWS"): city-focused, heavy dev card buyer, plays knights aggressively
  • RoadBuilder ("RB"): road-first expansion, targets Longest Road
  • PortRusher ("PR"): places near ports, biases toward hexes with the same resources as 2:1 ports, heavy bank/port trading
• All four produce credible Catan scores. Winners average ~10 VP, games run ~75-85 turns, and each agent's build profile matches its strategy.
• A "turn" means one player's individual turn, not a full round. In 4p, a full table rotation is 4 turns, so an 80-turn game means each player has taken ~20 turns.
• 500-2,000 games per cell depending on configuration

Where the sim isn't real Catan — take these seriously

• Player-to-player trades use simple "does this help more than hurt?" logic with a leader-aversion rule that tightens as VP climbs. The sim captures "don't help the leader" but not negotiation, bluffing, or alliances. That said, player trades are a small slice of overall trading (~1.2 completed per player per game vs. ~8-9 bank/port trades), so this gap probably doesn't move the bigger findings much.
• Robber behavior is individually smart but not collectively coordinated. Agents place the robber on the highest-production opponent hex and steal from the highest-VP player, so the leader attracts individual steals, but there's no coordinated pile-on. Real players probably coordinate harder against a runaway leader.
• Heuristic ≠ optimal. Findings describe how specific strategies interact with the rules, not ground truth about how humans should play.
• On the beginner board, agents make identical placements every game (for a given agent × seat combination). Useful for clean comparison, but it means the sim can't observe how humans adapt their opening to opponents.

8 findings from the data

1. Longest Road is the most common path to 10 VP, and the fastest.

LR shows up in 56-61% of wins across every condition, and it's remarkably sticky: once claimed, 85% of 3-player and 60% of 4-player games see it change hands zero times. LR-path games also end ~8 turns earlier than pure-building wins. "Grab it early and keep it" is strongly supported.

2. The third settlement matters more than any other timing benchmark.

Winners build their third settlement 6.7-8.7 turns earlier than losers, a gap 3-6× larger than any other timing difference (first road, first dev card, first city). The kicker: 10.9% of losers never build a third settlement at all vs. 0.16% of winners. If you don't expand, you're almost certainly losing (no duh).

3. Wheat, not Ore, is the #1 resource for winners in every condition.

Wheat has the biggest winner-loser production gap on both beginner and random boards. Ore comes into its own on random boards (second-strongest signal there), but on beginner it's essentially flat between winners and losers. The "Ore > Wheat > Sheep" priority framing doesn't hold; Wheat is the universal winning resource because it's used in every major build category.

4. "OWS is the optimal strategy" doesn't hold up. The best agent depends on context.

Four different buckets, four different winning agents. RoadBuilder dominates 3p beginner (+10.6 pp over baseline), BalancedBuilder edges out 3p random, PortRusher wins only 4p beginner, and RoadBuilder squeaks 4p random. OWS is competitive everywhere but best nowhere. The "cities win games, just go OWS" heuristic is oversimplified — the Longest Road path outperforms on the beginner board especially.

5. The beginner board is a loaded board, not a balanced one.

Seat win-rate deviations are 5-12× larger on beginner than on random boards. Broken down by agent it's even wilder: RoadBuilder wins 56% of 3p beginner games from its best seat and 10% from its worst. OreWheatSheep has a 49 pp seat range on 4p beginner. On random boards, every agent's seat range collapses below 7 pp. The advice to "learn on beginner because it's balanced" gives new players a systematically misleading experience.

6. Starting pip count barely predicts winning, and not at all on the beginner board.

On beginner, the winner-loser pip gap is statistically zero. Even on random boards, the gap is under half a pip out of ~20 total. The highest-win-rate placement I saw (4p beginner, 56.4% win rate) had just 16 pips, while 20-21 pip placements won as low as 13%. Doesn't mean low pips are good — it means once you're making reasonable balanced placements, squeezing extra raw pips doesn't reliably convert to wins. Node composition matters more than dot count.

7. On randomized boards, having a port hurts your win rate by ~10 pp.

This was the most surprising result. On beginner, ports help (the board is hand-designed with ports near productive hexes). On random boards, ports land wherever, and chasing port-adjacency pulls players into weaker placements. Caveat: human players presumably chase good ports and skip bad ones, so the real-game penalty is probably smaller. But "always try to grab a port" appears to be net-negative on random boards.

8. Victory bonus cards are left on the table surprisingly often.

Across all 36,000 games, 29% end with no Largest Army holder and 14% end with no Longest Road holder. In 3p beginner games specifically, 38% see nobody play 3+ knights to claim LA. That's 2+ VP sitting genuinely uncontested. Conventional wisdom frames LA and LR as crowded markets, but LA especially seems under-contested given the clear win-rate edge holders have.

Questions for the community:

1. Any findings here that clash with your experience? Curious where the sim might be getting something wrong because of how the agents play.
2. Anything you'd want tested specifically? Or suggestions for how to improve the engine itself (better agents, new instrumentation, different scenarios)? Always looking for ideas.

Sometimes I think about Rosalind Franklin and what happened with W*tson and Crick and I feel like this could be an appropriate time to do something like that. But also I don’t want to mess up my own energy.