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Among the different quests of TH I have one that is my favorite for a few reasons. It's the Casino quest and here's why:

1) it has a unique mechanic -- decrypting data cards that's well set in the near-future timeperiod of the game.

2) Decoding cards works both for those people who enjoy a verbose narrative (who read all the text for the nuiances of the story) and for those who skim the narrative because they just want to move through the game. The nice thing is that even if you're in the latter group, you understand narratively what you need to do. You need to decode cards to get past a door. You really don't need to read the verbose text to know what you need to do an why you're doing it. That's great writing -- hitting both audiences at the same time.

3) The mechanic is also good because
a) in no-pull runs you can 'start' the quest before you hit the level to get the quest from Rand. You can start adventuring to collect computer parts while leveling up to hit the quest.
b) in pull-runs you can pull a positronic compute to speed up the time required for the quest.
c) in the future there could be a skill to acquire to speed this up even more (You take a course in cryptography or forensic computing).

4) The mechanic has a floor for how fast you can push the quest. You can't pull the keycard, so you need to decode. And that has a time-floor. It's also nice because you can 'work on this quest' while doing the next quest (waiting for swipe cards to finish) or leveling up.

5) You pick up other items at the same time that might help you advance in other aspects of the game. I'm thinking of dataplates here, and making software. There's a bit of RNG here that adds a bit of flavor to your run depending on what software you end up with.

6) the need for the capo key is fun twist for the verbose narrative people. It doesn't play as strongly to the skim narrative people but it's still pretty obvious that you hit a door and you need another key.

7) The reward for the quest is a welcome boost of chips at the right time.

About the only shortcoming of the quest might be that you can't Lasso VIPs. Mechanically I assumed seeing one for sale in the blackmarket in the same area as the Casio quest naturally meant that it was the purpose of the expensive lasso. I was surprised this didn't work. In understand there's a reason for this, it's just a shame the juxtaposition implies a synergy.

Anyway, I think it's probably the strongest quest in the game and I just wanted to give my appreciation voice.

Anyone else have a favorite quest or mechanic?

The Casino quest is actually my least favorite... Largest bottleneck in the game. Depending on the RNG, it can take an entire day's worth of turns. I think it would help if the VIP /always/ dropped the ripped card. Atleast then, it'd somewhat reduce the ridiculous amount of time spent on it. I was almost to level 7 once when trying to complete this quest, and that's just too long.

All the quests have the capacity for RNG hate, but it does feel like the Casino is the worst. Some runs, the swipe cards don't want to drop. Some runs, the VIP doesn't even want to show up. Some runs, I keep checking my inventory because surely the capo key must have dropped by now and I just missed seeing it.

The quest is a nice milestone, though. Even though you can get it done relatively early in a run, it feels like a halfway point. Maybe that's just me. It does have some of the most interesting mechanics, though.

My favorite would probably be the twin Level 8 quests, because you're in more than one area and there's more than one way things can go. It probably doesn't hurt that by Level 8, the character is really starting to hit their stride in terms of skills.

I like the mechanic tying up Go Fish, Again and Trouble in the Wasteland. I wish there were more quests in which things can go in multiple threads, and moving from one to the other is beneficial.

Through the Dimensional Rabbit-Hole is my favorite quest. It's not overly long, the XP is good, and there are some decent drops along the way. With +XP modifiers, by the time the quest is done, i find that i'm either level 11 or very close to it - which naturally leads you into the Level 11 quest.

While I love the writing in the level 8 quest (heh), I think I like the level 7 quest. It started to introduce what would later become reputation, and the choice it gives presents a moral choice for the character where they can weigh rewards. I think the rewards are too skewed to be a real choice, but shades of level 11 are there too. I like what it represents, even if execution was somewhat flawed.

Level 10 quest is my least favorite, because I get the most RNG hate on it. 60 turns just for the caves portion (this is after I had 2 of the caves x'ed out already) due to critical hits on me 3-4 times in a row. I have issues picking the right caves, and adventuring in the second area unlocked never seems to yield the non-combats (even with +20% noncombat). My favorite quest is probably the dual level 8 quests or level 11 quest, fighting to the top of a building, and that last room, cant wait for the level 12 quest...

I like the level 9 quest - it has a nice 'puzzle'(easy once you figure it out/spoil it though), and can be made significantly faster through +NCs. Also, bit of a Shakespare fan here so I'm slightly biased


I dislike the level 5 one because of the excessive swing on getting cards to decrypt. I also don't really understand WHY they had to made the VIPS non-lassoeable.
Yes, it would make the quest easier, but...how is that bad, considering lassoes are a limited item anyway?
I can understand mob instigators not being lassoeable, as there's only 5 of them, but for VIPs..It just feels weird narratively, even if done for reasons of balance.

I also dislike how it can take TOO many turns to face the Demiurge at 7. Maybe could put a ceiling on the turns before it shows up, or make it show up faster if you defeat the NPCs there easily(say, if you kill many of them in one or two blows and without taking a scratch, the Demiurge decides to come out sooner).
Or maybe if you level up to 8-9 and come back, he'll show up almost immediately.

Edivad wrote:I like the level 9 quest - it has a nice 'puzzle'(easy once you figure it out/spoil it though), and can be made significantly faster through +NCs. Also, bit of a Shakespare fan here so I'm slightly biased


I dislike the level 5 one because of the excessive swing on getting cards to decrypt. I also don't really understand WHY they had to made the VIPS non-lassoeable.
Yes, it would make the quest easier, but...how is that bad, considering lassoes are a limited item anyway?
I can understand mob instigators not being lassoeable, as there's only 5 of them, but for VIPs..It just feels weird narratively, even if done for reasons of balance.

I also dislike how it can take TOO many turns to face the Demiurge at 7. Maybe could put a ceiling on the turns before it shows up, or make it show up faster if you defeat the NPCs there easily(say, if you kill many of them in one or two blows and without taking a scratch, the Demiurge decides to come out sooner).
Or maybe if you level up to 8-9 and come back, he'll show up almost immediately.

Well, the lassos actually weren't the first items that could duplicate an enemy. Originally, they came as a summon from an IotM. So they're actually a lot easier to build a stockpile of if you have multiple copies of that IotM - I personally have like thousands of the things.

Edivad wrote: I also don't really understand WHY they had to made the VIPS non-lassoeable.

Early development of that mechanic has it reject anything with a certain flag, which is mostly for bosses in theory, but in practice occurs for anything which has something to check at the end of combat (in this case, dropping the key). I'm working on fixing this, at least for some cases. It may be a little arbitrary, but I think it's good if some quests can be sped up with lassos, and other quests can't -- a little variety, fosters different strategies, etc.

Demiurge is another location where I'm looking at adding a secondary way of manipulating that quest status. I've got some ideas, but it may be a while.