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Post by hemulen on Dec 20, 2017 19:35:32 GMT
I thought that I'd open a new thread for discussing the new awards, and keeping them separate from the release thread. So far I've completed all the New Order awards. Nothing too difficult there regarding execution, but not always trivial to figure out what to do based on the few hints (although some of them were obvious in hindsight). The only fresh start that I've done so far is book 19, which I easily completed on my first try. So there is quite a difference in difficulty with different books it seems. Regarding the expert award in book 15. Somehow I immediately knew what to do there. Probably more "outside the box" than the other awards. And some things should be taken literally.
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Post by tycho on Dec 21, 2017 0:22:02 GMT
With the book 15 award about the "subterranean tomb" I figured by now that I probably need to descend to the subterranean area past the death check, without Nexus and Alchemy (193). Then I can fight a Tunnel Stalker or use Animal Mastery. Then I should probably continue along the tunnel, without Nexus, Alchemy and Magi. The next section even mentions a time frame (less than a minute), as do several others on this route. I would think this is all that is required. Do I need to complete the book for it to unlock? Because most awards unlock when the requirements are fullfilled, but a few only at the end of the book, which is much worse because it takes a lot longer and you can't be sure if you did something wrong until the end.
Book 16, "did he drop something". I think it should be either on the boat with the Runic disc (255)or when you drink from the foul fountain and have less then 20 EP (265). Am I wrong or does it also only unlock at the end of the book?
Book 17, last award, what does "Sunlight may cause cancer" refer to?
Book 18, fifth award, "you might even say your journey might be plagued by misfortune". To enter the plagued village you can't have both of Deliverance and Pathsmanship. This should be noted in the hints so you can prepare for it.
And yeah, book 19 fresh start is a joke. That book in general is very easy.
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Post by hemulen on Dec 21, 2017 11:15:58 GMT
The book 15 expert award will unlock in the middle of the book. No need to play through it completely. I mentioned "outside the box" already.. While you could do it "honestly" (I wouldn't), there might be ways to "cheat", making it somewhat more obtainable. If you know what to do the execution should be trivial.
Also finally got the elusive potion in book one. Guided RNT might have helped a bit, but still took quite a few attempts. Need to try the timed awards next.
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Post by hemulen on Dec 21, 2017 13:23:42 GMT
So book 1 timed award is not as easy as I thought. Despite the "nerfs", after some 10+ real attempts + lots of training, I'm around 40 seconds. Not 100% sure if I have the optimal route, but pretty close I figure. Problem is remembering exactly where those buttons show up, and precisely hitting them immediately. Since there is only one roll on the path, I decided to do it "tool assisted", and recorded a macro. Completed it in 26 seconds, despite a missclick, where I lost my backpack in a whirlpool, and had to improvise, since I didn't know where I was. :-P
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Post by uziel on Dec 21, 2017 20:36:06 GMT
For my own experience, the book 1 expert award was nowhere near as hard as I initially thought. It did take me around 20 attempts, because that last roll is a b**** even with RNG guiding. But because you can whip through book 1 so quickly, it wasn't a big deal.
The book 2 expert award though... it feels like it should be easy. Killing the real assassin didn't work.. so I've tried several of the others to see if that makes it pop... nada. Hint please?
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Post by hemulen on Dec 22, 2017 4:05:46 GMT
The book 2 expert award: Let's just say that it was a very unlikely assassin... And a successful assassin is usually the one who does the killing.
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Post by UrQuan on Dec 22, 2017 20:19:01 GMT
I shall make a few general comments regarding the awards.
Following Kamikaze's and Dave's precedent here, most Grand master awards are only awarded at the end of the book, unlike the New Order one's. I have moved some of them to be awarded mid-book, but not the Item Collection one's. The Book 15 Expert award *is* awarded mid-book, however.
Most of my awards are smaller in scope than the Kai or Magnakai one's, but there are still several across the series that are in that format, with multiple conditions and a theme across the books to fulfill. Unlike for some of Kamikaze's awards, the "theme" or the general direction of what you're doing is not described separately in a hint: Each hint refers to one single condition, and of course in the order that they appear. I think the Expert Heroic Feat award in Book 19 is the only one that has multiple conditions but only general hints. Almost without exception, and unlike Kamikaze's, these awards require every condition fulfilled, which of course make them harder, on average. The hints are maybe just a little bit more cryptic too.
In New Order, some awards are very sparse on hints, but then the conditions are also much simpler. I think I struck a good balance there, not sure about the Grand Master one's. To give one general hint, for both series: There is a way to tell which one is the Epic Failure award. One last thing to note is that some of the Grand Master Minimum Combat awards are notoriously difficult.
I have tried to the best of my ability to come up with some more "out-of-the-box" awards as hemulen put it. There are only a few at the moment, but that one in Book 15 could among those. I just rewrote the hints for that one again. If you have any good ideas by the way, I will happily take suggestions!
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Post by tycho on Dec 23, 2017 0:36:52 GMT
book 14: make three well-aimed shots to kill and one to save.
Gnagusk, Vodok and save Banedon are for sure. I figuered the last one is a Drakkarim at 159:
With deadly accuracy, you draw an Arrow and let fire at the crawling Drakkarim guard. At such short range the shaft penetrates his iron backplate, killing him instantly.
It doesn't have a well-aimed check, but I didn't find any others. Did I miss something? I also completed the book afterwards, no award.
Also still clueless about the book 15 expert award. You're trapped for 15 days. Am I supposed to escape the tomb section in 15 seconds? in 15 sections? or manipulate my pc clock by 15 days??
I'm not so good at figuering out some very vague conditions, especially not if I don't know if I'm on the right track or absolutely not. The high and low combat awards I like very much though, those I can easily analyze and plan which skills I need. I got all of them except the high combat award for book 12. It's funny, in books 13-18 the low-combat awards are the hard ones, in 19 and 20 the high-combats are actually the hard-ones, you really have to go out of your way to find those and can't have all of the skills.
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Post by UrQuan on Dec 23, 2017 1:10:30 GMT
book 14: make three well-aimed shots to kill and one to save. Gnagusk, Vodok and save Banedon are for sure. I figuered the last one is a Drakkarim at 159: With deadly accuracy, you draw an Arrow and let fire at the crawling Drakkarim guard. At such short range the shaft penetrates his iron backplate, killing him instantly. It doesn't have a well-aimed check, but I didn't find any others. Did I miss something? I also completed the book afterwards, no award. That Drakkarim one was such an insane section to get to that I did not include it. I guess I should have! The third one I meant was not that much easier, since I did not list the required skills for that award. It's the Korozon, which you can kill by Bow and Arrow if you have Magi-magic. Hmm, try some of those!
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Post by tycho on Jan 14, 2018 13:51:40 GMT
The NO books have minimum combat awards, but no high combat awards. Why not? I would very much like these (and maybe also fresh start if it's not too difficult). In NO I would argue that high combat is more difficult, and interesting, than minimum combat, not only because you have to survive all the fights, but also finding them all which is often more complicated than evading them. It also leads to some sections one would normally almost never reach. I have just now analyzed the NO books for combats and could suggest high combat numbers for each book if it would help. I basically followed your criteria (any possible combination of disciplines without any rng) with a little deviation if it was otherwise too easy. In that regard, I found a lot of your GM high combat awards too easy and not strictly following your criteria, often being 1-3 fights below what I thought it should be. Just my opinion/observation.
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Post by UrQuan on Jan 14, 2018 15:35:58 GMT
The NO books have minimum combat awards, but no high combat awards. Why not? I would very much like these (and maybe also fresh start if it's not too difficult). In NO I would argue that high combat is more difficult, and interesting, than minimum combat, not only because you have to survive all the fights, but also finding them all which is often more complicated than evading them. It also leads to some sections one would normally almost never reach. I have just now analyzed the NO books for combats and could suggest high combat numbers for each book if it would help. I basically followed your criteria (any possible combination of disciplines without any rng) with a little deviation if it was otherwise too easy. In that regard, I found a lot of your GM high combat awards too easy and not strictly following your criteria, often being 1-3 fights below what I thought it should be. Just my opinion/observation. Already in the Grand Master series, or even before, the "thematic" explanation for Minimum Combat / High Combat is pushing it a quite a bit. The actual narrative in the books is so similar, irrespective of what you do. I also realized that some New Order books just didn't make sense for High Combat according to my own formulae (only a couple of combats difference between Minimum and High Combat). All this coupled with the fact that, and it might not seem like it but; making the hints, descriptions and icons are some of the most time-consuming work I do on Seventh Sense. So in the end, I was all too eager to drop those, and the Fresh Start awards for now. Of course, the Minimum Combat awards suffer the same problem with narrative. I didn't try to force it but instead wrote a much more general description. Only at that point, why not just make them into "participation awards" (beat the book, basically)? I considered that, in fact I'm still considering it: If I can get the award info to update dynamically, Minimum Combat, High Combat, and Fresh Start could be listed all in that same award, which would be the ideal solution. For sure many of the GM High Combat awards are easy. I was happy with that since there are so few GM awards you gain on a blind play-through otherwise. Any combination of skills also means *lack* of any skills, which is probably why you found the limit wrong.
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Post by tycho on Jan 14, 2018 22:35:24 GMT
I agree that the NO books and to some extent the GM books are less suited for high combat awards due to their linear nature. But a high combat run is still substantially different from an average run and requires some effort, IF the requirement is reasonably high. Just look at the newly released book 24: you could easily complete it with 5 combats, average may be 8 and high combat could be 11 or 12, out of a possible 13. There aren't crazy amounts of luck involved, just a little (unlike some other awards...), and you actually need to plan out the run and put in a little effort/restarts. If you just make the high combat awards easier than they could and should be, then yes, you might just as well call them participitation awards. I just feel that from the NO books onwards (or rather already starting at book 19) evading enemies becomes the rule rather than the exception, where you easily complete books with just 5 combats or even less, minimum combat almost becomes the default, while high combat could be just as interesting if not even more. I also don't really understand the reason for your new high combat formula which you even applied to earlier books, which makes almost all high combats even easier (some of them were challenging before). I mean, why not include some rng, not the crazy low 10% stuff, but if there are two fights at 50%, at least one of those should be expected for a high combat award. Some of the minimum combat awards are really demanding, why not treat the high combats the same? But even if I follow your new formula, I still get a higher combat count for almost all books by at least 1 or 2, no rng involved. Of course I consider lack of skills as well, you actually can't have a lot of skills to not be forced to evade combats. Where we may actually differ is, I generally assume limited to 5 disciplines rule, because otherwise, yes, you won't be able to get some combats later in a series because of too many skills. And now that old hardcore is gone (and new hardcore something different entirely) the convenient option for 5 discipline runs is gone (custom mode doesn't unlock awards, right?). But one could still start at a later book to have less skills. Anyway, sorry for the long rant, we seem to have a different perspective on this. A fun, related note: on my last, rather average 1-20 run I had 108 combats in total. Now after all this high combat analysis I calculated that it is reasonibly possible to get slightly above 300 combats (I already ignored 30% or lower combats). I find this huge discrepancy hilarious and might just try such a run next. Would make for a nice award, don't you think? Just kidding
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Post by UrQuan on Jan 15, 2018 13:03:24 GMT
I agree that the NO books and to some extent the GM books are less suited for high combat awards due to their linear nature. But a high combat run is still substantially different from an average run and requires some effort, IF the requirement is reasonably high. Just look at the newly released book 24: you could easily complete it with 5 combats, average may be 8 and high combat could be 11 or 12, out of a possible 13. There aren't crazy amounts of luck involved, just a little (unlike some other awards...), and you actually need to plan out the run and put in a little effort/restarts. If you just make the high combat awards easier than they could and should be, then yes, you might just as well call them participitation awards. I just feel that from the NO books onwards (or rather already starting at book 19) evading enemies becomes the rule rather than the exception, where you easily complete books with just 5 combats or even less, minimum combat almost becomes the default, while high combat could be just as interesting if not even more. It's easy for you with the flowcharts. I can tell you now that, you are the only one who has gotten even a fraction of the new awards in general. Statistically, few people will ever get the new Minimum or High Combat awards in their current state, let alone if High Combat was more difficult. That's why I was only happy the GM one's turned out to be easier by coincidence, so you can gain them on a blind play-through; the *only* play-through for many. But again, the main reason for not having those for New Order is that thematically they just don't make sense. For Minimum Combat it at least aligns with the player's regular incentives (avoiding combats). Nearly without exception (Liberator of Torgar?), I made the High Combat awards more difficult. Not sure what you're thinking of. I guess most notably Prisoners of Time which really used to be a participation award (I remember hemulen accidentally getting that while he was going for Minimum Combat). Well, it didn't have to be a hard and fast rule like that, I just had to draw a line somewhere. Yeah, of course I assumed unlimited Disciplines. I think I also considered items, like having the Sommerswerd versus not? Give a couple of books as examples and I'll double check them. Indeed Custom mode doesn't unlock awards which is one reason I asked for what Custom rules people use in practice. Not a terrible idea actually. I'll consider it.
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