Negotiation is Overrated (Prestige 11)

[LETSCHAT]

Challenge Run:

Only rules are to beat the game only doing combat (no negotiations) and at highest prestige you can, all while having fun.

Some things I've learned:

• Prepare to fail most of the missions.  You'll make a lot of NPC's angry, kill bounties that you needed info from, botch missions due to being too aggressive, etc.  It's all fine.  You're only concern is to build XP for the combat deck and survive to the next day.
• Prestige 11 makes it so hard to buy anything at the start of the game.  Basically fight for as many shills as possible.  I sold two yotes away just to be able to remove two cards from the combat deck. 
• Refining the combat deck is the sole focus in the run.  It's worth losing missions where you'll kill bounties if it means you can level up cards.  It's worth passing on grafts (picked from random draws) if you know a mission will offer 50 shills you need to remove a card and refine your deck synergy.  It's worth letting people hate you, especially if it will hurt your negotiations.  It's worth not buying an ally that could give you a extra action buff if you can meet them in the bar randomly.  Everything you do should be based on improving the combat deck as much as possible. 
• Mutators I used in this run were Vendetta and the one that let's you have a License to Murder.  You still get cards that make negotiations harder (Aggressive) but you won't be doing any of them in the first place.  Vendetta sucks until you consider that you can lean on counter mechanics.  If you build a strong counter deck, you *want* enemies to hit you.  By late game, the bulk of damage will come from enemies getting countered. 
•  Day 1 I ran into two situations where I couldn't find a combat mission.  That said, take as many chances to fight as you can until all your cards are leveled up.  
• The most fun you'll have is thinking like a time traveler, considering from the very outset who to make friends with.

Final Boss Fight: https://youtu.be/bjtB9QJO4Fk

[pacovf]

Hmmm, I assume the biggest hurdle is the D1 boss, that you now have to do by yourself (unless you get a pet) . The fight with the docks patrol can be skipped with a bribe. Discard/counter strategy is necessary, due to some of the more lopsided fights that you will do because of lack of negotiation. You want to side with the Admiralty just to avoid fighting Oolo all by yourself. Should be doable even without mutators, although it won't be easy.

Doing this with Rook is straight up impossible at prestige 11, I think. 

[RageLeague]

5 minutes ago, pacovf said:

Hmmm, I assume the biggest hurdle is the D1 boss, that you now have to do by yourself (unless you get a pet) . The fight with the docks patrol can be skipped with a bribe. Discard/counter strategy is necessary, due to some of the more lopsided fights that you will do because of lack of negotiation. You want to side with the Admiralty just to avoid fighting Oolo all by yourself. Should be doable even without mutators, although it won't be easy.

Doing this with Rook is straight up impossible at prestige 11, I think. 

Rook has bad defensive options, and also has really low hp compared to Sal. Succeeding in late game requires you have very good defense options or infinite combos.

(Does one know any reasonable infinite combo to get in Rook?)

Theoretically you can go infinite with Gun Smoke, Lifeline, and up to 5 other cards, one of them is any damaging card. I have no idea how plausible it is.

[RageLeague]

Oh yeah infinite combo time.

Right now this is prestige 0 rook, no mutator.

Wow. The game doesn't save when I bought the cards, AND after I quit the shop dialog. I have to reroll the shop items to hopefully get the gun smoke again.

On the other hand, now I learned you can save scum to reroll shop items.

[SpicyNiceCream]

48 minutes ago, RageLeague said:

On the other hand, now I learned you can save scum to reroll shop items.

God dammit don't say it out load of what I'm doing now. Also it seems like you killed Sal, you monster.

2 hours ago, RageLeague said:

(Does one know any reasonable infinite combo to get in Rook?)

It's a veteran deck but you get the idea. 

Visionary Gun Smoke + Visionary Lifeline, also trim your hand below 11 for infinite action. There's also the +action on burn target card but I never try it.

[TF3]

37 minutes ago, SpicyNiceCream said:

 

 

Ah yes, the Rook Rave Party deck. He looks like he's dancing with glowsticks with time sped up.

[LETSCHAT]

10 hours ago, pacovf said:

Hmmm, I assume the biggest hurdle is the D1 boss, that you now have to do by yourself (unless you get a pet) . The fight with the docks patrol can be skipped with a bribe. Discard/counter strategy is necessary, due to some of the more lopsided fights that you will do because of lack of negotiation. You want to side with the Admiralty just to avoid fighting Oolo all by yourself. Should be doable even without mutators, although it won't be easy.

Doing this with Rook is straight up impossible at prestige 11, I think. 

Doable without mutators, yes easily.  Just not as fun.  You end up killing about half the cast of named NPCs so you have a way of dealing with the bad social banes.  The lack of fun comes from how much slower the game becomes if you don't have vendetta.  Yes, it sucks to be attacked all the time, esp day one and 2, but if you make a deck to compensate for that and survive day 3 you can steamroll the rest of the game with no pets, zero shills, and very quick fights.  The alt. Is turns where no one attacks you and your just cycling through turns building up heal over and over again.  No mutator is doable but just a slog and not fun.  I'd rather see Any% rules apply to the challenge run, and a "no mutator" category made for sticklers.

 

Siding with Spree is necessary.  They are the combat driven side and best chance to get missions that are mostly combat focused.  Plus two of the spree have a crucial "gain one extra turn" if you friend them both.  

 

 

[LETSCHAT]

8 hours ago, TF3 said:

Ah yes, the Rook Rave Party deck. He looks like he's dancing with glowsticks with time sped up.

Rook's combat looks throughout broken lol, hope this gets patched.

[RageLeague]

The devs really doesn't want the player to do combat only for rook, but I did prestige 0 with rook without mutators.

There are two parts of the challenge: survive long enough to get the combo pieces, and get the combo pieces.

The combo that i did is gun smoke and lifeline, but since i am not lucky enough to get lifeline, i used clicker for infinite draw. Unfortunately right now this combo is not infinite, but it can deal a lot of damage per turn, and since i have the best common graft for rook, the enemies can't touch me.

Rook's no negotiation run is significantly harder, because the devs put a lot of measures so that you have to negotiate: if you didn't capture the foreman when the rise infiltrates the barons, when you are confronted with the barons, you have to negotiate or else you get nuked(there's not even a fight. you just die). If you get the bandit babysitter quest, you have to fight an entire bandit camp with like 4 people and 2 fleads(you probably can run away, but i never tried. you will lose out on a bunch of money, too). Also, when you solely rely on your starting deck + whatever items you have and grafts, without any way to negotiate for allies, there's not nearly enough damage output to even penetrate through the shield regen. I have a 2hp cobbledog with me, but luckily i have healing vapor, so that's a consistent source of damage. For the 21+ turns in that fight, the big robot only used 2 leg wag attack. You have to be very lucky to survive long enough to see your combo complete.

Other challenges are: Linear quest giving. You only have 1 choice in quests in day 2. If you get a quest where you rally workers, the run is over, since I count negotiate but auto concede as negotiation(i don't know how the game thinks). Hard to access black market. Because you can't negotiation, you have to pay 100 or get a random event that lets you befriend jakes.

Tips for this challenge:

In addition to the ones that also apply to sal, you also need to pick the shovel since it's still a very good combat card, even if you run the risk of getting nuked during infiltration. Do NOT kill the foreman used as hostage, because otherwise you have to negotiate or die. Always pick destroy upgrades, and never pick any other cards except combo pieces, and try to keep the deck size below 10 because that's the max hand size. If you have rook meets sal event, betray sal, because you get double the money, and the boon from sal is useless without negotiation. Plus, red scarf is a free item. Do not go for the explore deep bog event, because you can get deep bog secret cards that can't be insta-removed. Also, you can destroy item cards any time not in battle by clicking on the item card in the battle deck screen. Utilize it. Disable unnecessary packs to reduce the pool of cards so you can actually get the combo pieces you need, and DO NOT enable any mods that add extra battle cards to the pool, like me, because i forgot to disable it(don't worry, i actually didn't use any modded cards, so that doesn't count as cheating). Rise radicals and bogger clobbers are the best boon you can buy with shills, so try get those. Unless you got all your combo pieces, because now they are not useful anymore. I have to attack a rise radical friend to complete a quest, but it's totally worth it after I got my combo pieces. You can remove cards twice a day, once during day time, and once during night time. Side with the barons on day 3 and day 4, because flekfis don't incept strange chemicals into your deck, and the wounding attack from the baron toolbox is actually wound, and not "weak point". Try not to remove the parasite at the beginning, because the -10 max hp reduction is very painful, but feel free to remove it after you got your combo pieces.

Here's the victory screen.

[pacovf]

I think auto-conceding still counts as no negotiations. It seems in the spirit of the challenge.

On the other hand, I would argue that restricting card packs is in the same ballpark as using mutators. Might be the only way to pull it off in Rook’s case, but it should be mentioned at the forefront that’s how you’re doing it.

Unrelated, I feel like some cards should have a keyword that expends them when you get fatigued. The player should not be encouraged to grind battles/negotiations forever, because it’s hella boring. Cards that heal you without expending are the big offenders here.

[RageLeague]

34 minutes ago, pacovf said:

I think auto-conceding still counts as no negotiations. It seems in the spirit of the challenge.

On the other hand, I would argue that restricting card packs is in the same ballpark as using mutators. Might be the only way to pull it off in Rook’s case, but it should be mentioned at the forefront that’s how you’re doing it.

Unrelated, I feel like some cards should have a keyword that expends them when you get fatigued. The player should not be encouraged to grind battles/negotiations forever, because it’s hella boring. Cards that heal you without expending are the big offenders here.

Disabling card packs only changes what cards shows up when drafting, while enabling mutators changes how the game works. The purpose of these challenges is to see if something is possible under some conditions, so if you decrease your chance slightly by allowing more cards in your pool, that's on you. It doesn't change whether it's possible, it just changes how many times you need to try before you get the desired outcome.

Allowing cards to expend after getting fatigued seems very weird, and allows weird interactions. When does expend on fatigue triggers? Does it trigger on gaining the condition, drawing the card, or play it? What happens when you remove fatigue later? Also, most enemies gets stronger as the fight goes on, and all the heal cards that doesn't expend gains like 1 heal or something every time. so if you heal little by little, you might just take too much damage and revert all the heals. If you somehow manages net positive health, and are able to heal from critical to max hp, you might as well try to build a competent deck.

[pacovf]

Well, by default, you play with all card packs and no mutators. Selecting card packs definitely changes the experience of playing the game. The effect is of a similar magnitude than some of the mutators, in my opinion. You are correct that if you play long enough, you will eventually luck into card selections in such a way as to reproduce any arbitrary card selection. So achieving something with card pack off proves that it’s technically possible in default play, in a way that playing with mutators doesn’t. I just don’t expect to pull off a combat-only prestige 11 Rook game with default settings, despite your showcase (which, to be clear, is still extremely impressive, Rook campaign be crazy).

Mostly I find that a big part of the fun is to make-do with whatever cards the game throws at you. The game is more boring to me if I select card packs to all but guarantee I get specific cards for my combo. Nothing wrong if someone enjoys it that way though.

For the other point, I don’t want to derail this thread even further, but the reason fatigue is a mechanic to begin with is that very few enemies actually scale up during the fight. The optimal play used to be to drag fights to upgrade all your cards within a fight or two. Fatigue killed that, but there are some combat cards that still encourage that behaviour, like Seeker, Brain Tick and... uh I guess that’s it. But uh if there were more, adding a keyword like “exhausting: when you gain Fatigue, expend this, wherever it is in your deck” would help. Maybe just fixing those cards is better though.

[LETSCHAT]

4 hours ago, pacovf said:

Well, by default, you play with all card packs and no mutators. Selecting card packs definitely changes the experience of playing the game. The effect is of a similar magnitude than some of the mutators, in my opinion. You are correct that if you play long enough, you will eventually luck into card selections in such a way as to reproduce any arbitrary card selection. So achieving something with card pack off proves that it’s technically possible in default play, in a way that playing with mutators doesn’t. I just don’t expect to pull off a combat-only prestige 11 Rook game with default settings, despite your showcase (which, to be clear, is still extremely impressive, Rook campaign be crazy).

Mostly I find that a big part of the fun is to make-do with whatever cards the game throws at you. The game is more boring to me if I select card packs to all but guarantee I get specific cards for my combo. Nothing wrong if someone enjoys it that way though.

For the other point, I don’t want to derail this thread even further, but the reason fatigue is a mechanic to begin with is that very few enemies actually scale up during the fight. The optimal play used to be to drag fights to upgrade all your cards within a fight or two. Fatigue killed that, but there are some combat cards that still encourage that behaviour, like Seeker, Brain Tick and... uh I guess that’s it. But uh if there were more, adding a keyword like “exhausting: when you gain Fatigue, expend this, wherever it is in your deck” would help. Maybe just fixing those cards is better though.

If you have more fun with mutators, use mutators.

If you have more fun enabling/disabling card packs, enable/disable card packs.

If you have more fun playing at prestige 0, play at prestige 0.

 

Anything goes.  The only stipulation of a Combat-Only Run is in the title, combat only. 

Brag points goes to the folks that do progressively harder combat-only runs (Ex. Prestige 11, no mutators, all cards activated, no pets, no allies, zero grafts, no card upgrades, etc.).