Metroplexity

I'm up to 60 times running away from them, though I haven't been sticking around to get hit by anything first. I figure I'll keep doing that for a bit longer, but if I get over 100 times without a result I'll probably write it off as a dead end.

I've also been repeatedly offering forgiveness to Sofia after hearing her story, just in case persistence does anything there. Only up to 15 times on that, since I've been boosting my chance of etheric encounters to try and get more of the hands.

Edit: So, testing so far:
Straight up run aways: 60
Running away after hitting the hands to create some smoke: 41
Repeatedly forgiving Sofia: 32

And I once got killed because a chain caused me to get grabbed by the hands and I couldn't get away.

From that, it looks like simply running away isn't the path toward getting this skill.

So, this is purely speculation, but I'd guess this skill, Run from Regret, comes from dying to the unforgiven hands many times without a containment suit and adding to its smoke A LOT.

Why? I suspect there's some kind of running HP total for the unforgiven hands that carries over from battle to battle. I dealt it 40 damage with a containment suit, and then 80+ damage in one go with a containment suit, and I died both times from its end-of-round effect. Next round, I stalled for two rounds and then did exactly 19 etheric damage and it died and I got chains of regret. So feeding it a lot might actually result in another resolution.

Second theory- it involves running away from the hands a bunch, but it must be a lot of running, because I didn't get the skill from constantly fleeing this thing while trying to do other things in the church.

Third theory, and now that I think about it, most likely- Failing to run away from the hands and dying to its normal attacks. That would probably make the most sense, thematically, and it even has a tight hold attack (I'm not sure which one) to facilitate this!

Blue Eyes does not count as Etheric for the purpose of Etheric results here. You have to have actual Etheric going on.

Have a bit of a throat/sinus infection thing going on right now. I hope to be able to do the podcast this week, but I'll wait until you don't all have to listen to me sniffling the whole time :)

Cheers!
Kinak

Looking for places where gaining a full point in a stat unlocks something different (like with Legion Tracts) and confirmed that it does not work that way for Programmed Terror.

Poked Kinak about this; it does seem likely a typo. Will report back shortly.

Powercode attack die does not seem to offer functions with Champagne Drunk, Good Worker or Blue Eyes active

1) I'm back. Did you miss me?
2) Should we expect sight link to do anything during novos hacking?
3) Why is that stealth, evasion, melee, ranged and etheric all have techniques that change form when following techniques of other types, but Fire mostly seems to be left out of that loop and only interacts with itself?
4) Are there any adverse side effects to Eclipse besides the hallucinations? Something more pharmalogical in nature?
5) In a threeway fight between the Yakuza, Omnitech Special Forces and the best of Midgard Security (not counting special projects), who would win?
6) Three of the unearthly hacking-related items (mascot adapter, mysterious coat and midgard player) I feel are a couple notches above what we currently have available. As more areas and content open up, will we eventually see earthly hacking equipment that can match their power?
7) Do you ever worry that people will discover and then never use low-power techniques and equipment that are difficult to obtain, thereby never learning their additional content?
8) I've always felt it was odd that the metroplex day smoky dragon requires special techniques to defeat, but most of these techniques are unearthly content. There are only two exceptions that can be obtained before defeating the smoky dragon: necrotic vial and fire serpent. Are there other smoky techniques hiding within earthly content, or are we just stuck with these two? If so, any hints on where to obtain them?

Get well soon Kinak!

This seems to be thematically weird, considering that defeating the hands in a fair fight results in something that rewards you for running away. Are you sure it's not a bug, Al?

Some halloweeny stuff.

-You've mentioned before that you calibrate the amount of money we need off the money that's available to active players. Is that going to be kept steady? Lower?

-Since we all seemed to be running on fumes by the time the party started, were you doing the same sort of calibration for 'amount of energy required' for getting the party set up?

-Would there be any way we could help troubleshoot triggers/events before the event? I don't think there's an easy way to do that, but mini-events or micro events to test triggers might be valid?

-So far as I could tell, everyone received the same prizes this year (The hardhat and claw.) Were there any further hidden prizes we just didn't get to?

-Was the Bat Spy (who totally was not the vampire frat boy) meant to be permanently suppressed on shoo away?

-Is this our new 'university pumpkin' encounter? At least for a few years? (That would make 'shoo' the equivalent to 'smash the pumpkin')

-I didn't get to even see the empty fountain. Was it meant to be suppressed while under a halloween spirit threshold, or did I just get unlucky RNG?

-Is this new Patreon stuff going to make things easier as far as Christmas? Less fancy? More fancy?

Otherwise, how are things holding up on your side? Any cool costumes from trick-or-treaters?

Hope you're doing well, I've recently come back into Metroplexity.

I left when Oldtown first launched, and would like to hear a summary of how things went, and what major updates or changes you have made in the past 2 or so years. Any big moments besides the community events, like Halloween?

Have you had many "harder to work on" areas of the game?
Things you wanted to add in that were just too complicated? Did you simplify them or put them aside?

Have you been enjoying any games recently?

Are you working on any other medias that aren't games specifically?

I think the number of instances of Hammer Strike you learn from beating this guy must scale with something. I unlocked him for my latest reset, with the idea of maybe poking around a bit, maybe keeping him around for post-Vigilante stuff, and had been just ignoring him for quite a while but finally decided to take him down. This is my result on the first fight:

You lay into the cyborg for 30 melee damage.
The cyborg tosses a gas grenade at you, but your air is safely filtered.

You punch the cyborg, throwing the whole weight of your body behind it and dealing 18 melee damage.
The cyborg spins the hammer above his head, building up momentum until you disrupt the attack. You're struck by a glancing blow for 1 melee damage.

You drop any pretense of civility and suddenly club the cyborg for 28 melee damage.

You snap at the cyborg like a muzzled beast, ramming your headgear into him for 17 melee damage.

You've won the battle!

You check him over for any sign of who might have sent him. Nothing. Even his commlink seems to be brand new, no numbers programmed into it or anything.

He's barely human anymore, just a wall of cyberware. Everything's integrated, even that damned hammer won't budge from his hand.

You scoop up a handful of parts knocked loose during the fight and head on your way.

You found: biomonitor circuit

You found: 2 lengths of frayed cable

You found: 2 handfuls of circuit fragments
You learned a new Technique: Hammer Strike (10)

After the combat, you patch yourself up, healing 4 hit points.

You've earned 2 XP in Reflexes

You've earned 2 XP in Strength

Stats are:

Perception: 97 (104)
Reflexes: 96
Strength: 93
Will: 68 (79)

Modifiers:
Power
6 Etheric Power
12 Melee Power

Defense
9 Etheric Defense
12 Melee Defense
1 Ranged Defense
5 Stealth Defense

Attributes
+7 Perception
+11 Will

Fishing
Moderately Increased Fishing Yield

Other
2 First Aid

Equipment:

Hat: heavy containment helmet
Weapon: twisting silver blade
Offhand: shield of scales
Shirt: shark hide vest
Pants: shark hide pants
Gadget: salvaging tools

Effects:
Ocean Sight (65)

Techniques: Headbutt(1), Ghoul Bite(4), Beatdown(1), Lakebed Grapple(3), Crushing Punch(4), Clashing Blow(4)

No changes to the various "Dance along" options in the mushroom cave / sewers with five instances of Fae Leap, Fae Blessing and Fae Sight.

Happy Halloween! Thanks for the party event!

Oldtown questions:

• Will you be adding more mysteries to explore in the Oldtown Vault?

• Is there a possibility of entering the Oldtown offices proper via the back door through tunnelling to the vault?

• We've figured out how to infect the BigDig with code to turn it into a Giant Mole; and we can feed it centipedes, but even when it "seems happy" and with a tome of binding, it seems unwilling to do our bidding. Any hints on commanding it?

• Understanding the specifics of hacking the drive control on the BigDig has been difficult; I imagine it uses a similar mechanic to downloading the files from the Vault Records; except it doesn't show the percentage and we can only test once per reset. Can you confirm that we are on the right track?

• Are there more areas we can infect with vines other than the records office?

Judging by id numbers, we've found less than half the available avatars out there. Are all 49 currently available? Are they just really hard to get or is there a "trick" that would help us get a bunch more if we understood it? Any general tips?

The Fae Dancer in the Cellar Door club uses Fae Leap but not etheric version; can we feed her Eclipse?

Do you feel like you've painted yourself into any corners with any mechanics?

• Did anyone get the sweet canes that the vampires were wielding this year?
• On a possibly related note, were the vampires intended to drop bloody sludge and not something else?
• Is it possible to learn that cane strike technique that some enemies use, or are we just too poor?
• Will we find out what the wolf echoes do later?
• All this talk about cooking's got me thinking: Where does the non-fish meat in Metroplex come from? Are there traditional farms somewhere or is the meat mostly synthetic?

Heya Kinak! Happy Post-Halloween!

• Any general thoughts on how Halloween turned out this year?
• Did the blood fountains just require more work on the maze encounters, or was there something else going on there? Emily's mention of the plans being worked on let us know they weren't ready right away, but left it unclear what the trigger might have been.
• With the titles like Stone Wings and Bat Whisperer becoming unavailable and then completely dropping away after a year, is there any chance you might let us know what the requirements were, after the fact? Or is there a chance some of them might get re-used in a future Halloween?
• How do you feel about how Patreon is working out so far?
• What do you think about the idea of some way for attackers in gang warfare to spend energy/gang profits/items on debuffing gang warfare clones? Applying increasing penalties to a power or defense score, for instance. It would be less efficient than simply taking defenders on straight on if you can, but it would help to narrow the gap against extremely entrenched defenders. Sort of an offensive version of fortifications, I suppose.
• …Any hints on snow snakes? I'd really like to actually see them one of these years.
• Looking through some computer options, I saw a reference to a Midgard Y7 in the refitted Y4 description. Think we'll be seeing any of those?

With Halloween in the rear-view, it's probably about time for the next podcast thread!

Ask your questions and you shall receive answers. Possibly spoOOOooky answers. We'll see.

As always, try to keep your questions brief and don't answer other people's questions.

Cheers!
Kinak

Cane Strike seems like something we really should be able to learn. And the Vampire this year had a "The partier beats you like an ungrateful servant for 16 melee damage" attack, which maybe also sounds like a form of this? Several combats with cane equipped, High Brow, using Punch, Brutality, Swordplay didn't give me anything.

Possible that this is supposed to be for eating gummy worms, not beetles. Asking Kinak about it.

The woman at the front desk looks up towards you. "I think you're on the list the students gave us" and heads into the back room.

"The other volunteers left this for you."

You found: 20 gummy beetles

"And a little something extra as well, you must have impressed someone."

You found: honorary hardhat

"And some of the guests as well."

You found: 7 gummy worms

"And… let's pretend I didn't see this."

You found: decorated werewolf claw

"Somebody found this when they were taking down all the mirrors. Hopefully it's yours."

You found: hunter costume hat

"And a girl dressed as a pirate wanted you to have this ribbon and, I guess, a piece of a costume you left?"

You found: witch's broom

You found: retro fundraising ribbon

"And there's apparently some candy leftover, so help yourself."

You found: 3 mellow pumpkins

You found: 6 candy eyeballs

You found: 3 handfuls of candy corn

You found: 8 handfuls of peanut butter candy

You found: 3 pumpkin lollipops

You found: retro candy bowl

You've earned the following 2018 Titles: ", Builder of Halloween", " the Bat Whisperer", ", Funder of Halloween"
(Reigning Titles are available until someone new takes the title)