Jakes are OP


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Jakes are by far the most powerful allies to have in Griftlands. Here's why:

A) Most Jakes have a boon that gives a 20 shill discount for shopkeepers. This allows you to easier make more friends, since sharing drinks with them now costs less. Three jakes who love you is enough to make any drink cost only one shill, meaning that you can buy pretty much as many drinks as you want so long as you don't mind the status cards. Befriending a jake will only lead you to making easier friends elsewhere.

B) Jakes like to accompany you on your travels. If you've got lots of jake friends, chances are you'll see an optional opportunity to have one accompany you on your travels. This is really good, because this means you now have a helping hand in combat and negotiation, and they usually have a boatload of health, so it's really difficult to take them down.

Before i wrap up, a few things I'd like to ask:

Do you think Jakes should be nerfed or do you like them as is?

What even is a jake? Is it like a criminal? What is it?

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Jakes are a group of laborers known to do some slightly less than legal work on the side, like smuggling. They're not criminals per se, that's just a hurtful stereotype, though it's true that they're often involved in rather unsavory endeavors.

Combat wise, I find that Dockhands are way too strong for being the lowest ranking member of the faction. Their ability to break Defense, stack Wound on you and Evasion on themselves is incredibly obnoxious, and you often have to face 2 Dockhands at the same time later in the run. It's why you never choose the combat option in the Intimidation Brawl job, cause the target is always accompanied by a couple Dockhands, which is suicidal to fight into. They're worse to fight than most Day 1 bosses! I brought up the Wound issue before, in large part to address the Dockhand problem.

 

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2 minutes ago, ZeppMan217 said:

Their ability to break Defense, stack Wound on you and Evasion on themselves is incredibly obnoxious,

yeah but they're powerful allies. That's the point of this post, that jakes are overpowered allies. They can be formidable foes, but why make enemies with one when they are so much better as allies?

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Finally! Someone gets it!

I'm pretty sure Jakes are a vague union of free-workers (as opposed to the indebted labourers of Havaria) so they'd likely hold a lot of power, as their labour has to be bought with shills, as opposed to debt-reduction. That's why you see them smuggling a lot of stuff, it pays well, and they have the money to pay off the bribe-loving admiralty. Unlike the spree, who seemingly just mug and scam people out of their shills.

Bargaining is by far the strongest boon in Griftlands, 20 shill discount makes a massive difference over the course of a 90 minute run - not to mention how disgusting it is in stacks. It's only 100 shills too, for some reason. Also their banes are equally as horrific, thin skin can very easily end your run with just one stack - that's how powerful wound is.

Dockhands are strong both as an ally and an enemy (whether or not I like that idk) but I feel Smugglers are even more busted. Medic makes them the only NPC class that can reliably heal YOU (Bilebrokers don't count). I can go into a boss fight with 8 HP as long as I have a Smuggler to give me 30~ HP back on turn one. For some reason their little peashooter does like double the damage of the Barkeep's big shotgun??? Promoted Dockhands are great too, if only for covering fire(?) being an aoe wound applier. Lifters aren't even half bad if you need a meat wall!

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I agree, 20 shills discount is a lot for so little money cost. Especially if you buy repeated low cost items like drinking with people. On the flip side, the bane that let everything cost 20 more is very strong as well, and you do not want to get it. Ever.

Combat wise, the dockhand is okay with their passive. If you face high prestige, or if you face multiple of them, wound can go out of control if you are not careful. However, they have lower health than smugglers, and they deal far less damage than smugglers.

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Pretty much all Jakes are powerful. Lifters haven't been talked about much, but their damage output is very high, and they frequently cut defense gains in half, which of course also enables Dockhands to stack Wound more easily. I'd say teams of Jakes are by far the most dangerous of all faction squads to fight against.

As for Bargaining, I'm not entirely sure how it weight up to Haggle Badge, I guess they both fit the top spot of being big money sources. It's always nice to try to get one or both boons as early as possible on day 1, and it's tempting to restart as Sal and Smith until you can. 

As squad members though? Give me the Admiralty Goons any day of the week. I'll never pass up Formation, free defense means I can play cards much more aggressively. Admiralty members also have the strongest negotiation help, since they let you get 30 shills for every negotiation. Very handy when doing the tax collection quest as Sal.

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Haggle badge used to be good, where there are actually side quests for you to complete. In sal's story, now, there's only 3 side quests you can do, and 2 occurs on day 1, at which point you probably don't have a haggle badge boon. In rook's story, side quests are non-existent, as you only do contract jobs, and for some reason, you can't haggle in a contract job. In smith's story, there's 3 side quests, one on each day before day 4. In conclusion, you can use haggle badge once on average, and two if you are really lucky, and considering that you usually get less than 150 for each haggle, it barely even pays itself. One or two bonus negotiation is nice, though.

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Haggle Badge used to be arguably the best boon in the game, because Sal got like 6 side quests it applied to per run. That was a lot of extra money and negotiation xp. Now it's nice to have if you get it for free, but that's about it.

I don't find Jakes to be overwhelmingly better than other ally NPCs, but they're definitely above average. Smugglers in particular are very good in Sal's story. But I find the main advantage of allies is the additional HP meatbag, so the difference between good and bad allies is not that huge anyway. Maybe if I played Brawl I would have stronger opinions about all this.

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5 hours ago, RageLeague said:

If you face high prestige, or if you face multiple of them, wound can go out of control if you are not careful.

Could you elaborate on what being careful means when you have 4 Defense breaks and 8 Wound on you? Because that's the main issue, you either kill/panic all of em in 2-3 turns or you die.

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18 minutes ago, ZeppMan217 said:

Could you elaborate on what being careful means when you have 4 Defense breaks and 8 Wound on you? Because that's the main issue, you either kill/panic all of em in 2-3 turns or you die.

That is the definition of not careful. How did you get there in the first place, if not for poor blocking? The base attack does 1 damage, and even if you have exposed, you can easily block it with 1 basic defense card.

Of course, if the dockhand is promoted, they do way more damage and the wound gets out of control quicker. Or if there are multiple of them. Or there are other wound dealers. But that would be another matter entirely.

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Just now, RageLeague said:

The base attack does 1 damage, and even if you have exposed, you can easily block it with 1 basic defense card.

The Expose attack does about 8. Once you're Exposed it becomes nigh impossible to completely block attacks from multiple enemies unless your entire hand is Defense, and not the starting kind. It's a race to the bottom and you're half way there from the start.

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1 minute ago, ZeppMan217 said:

The Expose attack does about 8. Once you're Exposed it becomes nigh impossible to completely block attacks from multiple enemies unless your entire hand is Defense, and not the starting kind. It's a race to the bottom and you're half way there from the start.

It depends on the situation. Even if you have exposed and 1 wound, you can still defend the 1x2 attack, and by the time exposed came back, your wound probably already wore off.

However, if the exposed is followed up by a double attack, and your defense cannot cover it, then you are screwed on high prestige. But if you are fighting multiple jakes dockhands and you don't have some good defense card, and you are fighting them all by yourself, then that would be more problematic.

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A single Dockhand is fine. It's when you have to face multiple, and Lifters, and other enemies together that it gets stupid. This is mostly a Brawl problem, with Intimidate and Assassinate jobs specifically. In the campaign, you usually have more options/allies. Jakes could use an Admiralty Clerk equivalent in their faction to flatten the power level curve.

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On 2/14/2021 at 4:55 PM, Blue Moth said:

Jakes are by far the most powerful allies to have in Griftlands. Here's why:

A) Most Jakes have a boon that gives a 20 shill discount for shopkeepers. This allows you to easier make more friends, since sharing drinks with them now costs less. Three jakes who love you is enough to make any drink cost only one shill, meaning that you can buy pretty much as many drinks as you want so long as you don't mind the status cards. Befriending a jake will only lead you to making easier friends elsewhere.

B) Jakes like to accompany you on your travels. If you've got lots of jake friends, chances are you'll see an optional opportunity to have one accompany you on your travels. This is really good, because this means you now have a helping hand in combat and negotiation, and they usually have a boatload of health, so it's really difficult to take them down.

Before i wrap up, a few things I'd like to ask:

Do you think Jakes should be nerfed or do you like them as is?

What even is a jake? Is it like a criminal? What is it?

Na, first, it's not most jakes that offer the boon, it's only the dockhands. And, if you want to drink free for ever more, you need to first find 3 of them in a spot where you can actually invite them to drink (two for Sal, as Ffish gives her a 50% discount on drinks), and spend 400 actual Lumin upfront for the drinks and bribes, (240 for Sal) That may get you a lot of store credit with vendors, but you need to pull that off rather early in the playthrough to end up with a net benefit, and probably buy a lot of cheap stuff, as on the good stuff 20, 40 or even 60 lumin is still just a fractional discount, and you still need to spend coins to make it happen. And frankly, for all that money early on, you can buy a lot of other useful stuff, like a Vrock pet plus upgrades to tank damage for you, or a juicy rare graft.

Plus, if you want to drink in copious amounts during the day, you need to build both your decks and graft assortments towards being able to deal with all those status cards without losing all the encounters, which limits your options a lot. Unless you get offered some very specific cards and/or grafts you probably can't afford to build very slim decks, for example, or you will end up drawing nothing but useless status cards. I usually only drink in game if I need to, because my resolution is dangerously low, or once the boss fight for the day is over and I still have some money left to spend. I will keep looking for thirsty dockhands in future, but frankly, other people's boons aren't half bad either. Free RPGs from the rise for example are simple and uncomplicated trouble solvers when a battle goes sour unexpectedly.

I am not sure about your statement, that Jakes like to travel a lot. They are one of the groups, that offer their services at the Meat Market in Murder Bay, but they won't work for store credits alone, even if they like you, and if you want to pick up someone early in the day, to get more out of their services, you probably shouldn't spend all your coins for booze in the evening. Their healing abilities are useful, but they are also somewhat prized in by lower fighting/negotiation stats than other allies in their prize range.

Judging by your enthusiasm, it's probably a viable strategy to buy ALL the potential friends with booze, if you can pull it off, but it's certainly not a no-brainer to win the game. Fluffwise it seems to be something Smith would be inclined to do, but in my playthroughs he didn't meet a lot of dockhands so far. The jakes in his area tend to be either gang members or higher-level perps, and I find the boons they offer somewhat underwhelming. I might try it out with Rook on my next run, as my Sal is all specked out as a pet handler.

Nerfing the jakes? Why even ask that question? This is not a pvp game, where one overpowered option can dictate the "meta" and crowd out other options. I will take that as a clickbaity praise for an interesting option you discovered, and thank you for pointing it out.

About who the jakes are, I am under the impression, that they are kind of a corrupt trade union of skilled harbour crafts, while the civilian workers rather represent the unskilled joes and the harbour administration, that employs them.

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