Due to generous donations through Ko-Fi, one of two secret characters has been unlocked and will joined the party!
Sue has been following along with Ricki’s adventures thus far, and has become her biggest fan. With each new detail of the story she learns, she becomes slightly more powerful. She can carry a lot, but she can’t use weapons, shields, or armour very well.
Cordy is a strange mushroom creature who appeared one day from parts unknown. They can only have other mushrooms as pets, but they have the ability to grow a nearly unlimited number of them. They can have up to three pets at once, but they can’t use weapons, shields, or armour at all.
Vote below to determine which character will join!
Like this post to vote for Sue!
LSN did talk a bit more about these characters in the stream he drew them on. I tried to transcribe those details at the time. Reproducing Sue’s info here.
“Sue is sorta a meta character, she becomes more powerful based on meta elements of dungeon eyes, rather than by finding new equipment, necessarily.”
“She is actually partially item independent. You can kinda slap whatever you want on her, without worrying too much about it; in terms of armor, weapons, that sort of thing”
“I would also classify her as more of a support type character, whose presence will kind of help you navigate dungeon elements, rather than help you kill monsters. Although there’s no reason that you cannot turn her into a monster killing machine either. Pretty good chance she will become that no matter what.”
Also, she is the Tuvi-expy
Basically, it appears Sue is better-geared for Dungeoneering, and gets stronger whilst inside them, and helps us navigate dungeon elements, which has been a big problem for us.
Given we are falling behind on the power curve, and the Dungeon aspect of the game is the aspect where we can just die and end the story (as we seem to nearly die every single dungeon), I vote for Sue. Cordy is basically a few more gold per dungeon if we leave him in the Manor – Sue is Survival if we take her to the dungeons, and probably not that much less gold if we leave her behind.
Remember, if you vote for Survival, vote for Sue.
This is insane hyperbole and fear mongering. Sue is explicitly described as being more of a support character, but that over time she can become more of a fighter. She’s even described here as being able to carry lots of items but not necessarily use equipment well, which to me speaks to her growing stronger over time due to meta changes in the game (number of dungeons cleared, number of enemies lensed, what have you), not to her being immediately overwhelmingly strong. Notice that that support language isn’t used with Cordy. She also isn’t mentioned as helping with the manor at all, and we know from other comments LSN has made that maxing out bond is something we will be incredibly happy about – aka it significantly buffs or changes characters.
Her being helpful with the manor in particular is total speculation. It wasn’t mentioned in the stream at all, but it was for Cordy.
I actually think they are similar in power level, and lean slightly to dungeons, in the case of Sue, and to the Manor, in the case of Cordy. LSN said Cordy is “probably” the better bet for the Manor, not “definitely”.
And I would very much prefer we bring the new character to the dungeon, where they will assist us with their increased power level directly, rather than we leave them at the manor and gather gold while we die out there.
Also, you also made a pretty big hyperbole in the other comment, doubling Cordy’s pet numbers… I jested a bit with the slogan, to counterbalance, but I see little point in getting a character than can allow us to catch up with the dungeon power curve and not use them for such! Remember: we fell behind at the manor, and again now because of Remorse. We must focus on catching up, and for that we need loot.
This is a misreading of the transcription. LSN said that if we don’t want to “cheat”, and just want to get a marginal benefit from taking the OP character once and then leaving them behind afterwards, Cordy is probably the better choice. That is NOT the same as the overall benefit of one character to the manor vs dungeons.
So, you may not be noticing this, but you’re arguing that one character is straight out worse than the other.
Because if Cordy is better at the manor, to whatever degree, than Sue.
And Sue isn’t better at dungeoneering than Cordy, regardless of role.
Then Cordy is straight out better than Sue and LSN is giving us a trapped option, so to say.
If that is your belief, we will agree to disagree until more evidence appears.
Despite my disagreements with LSN as regards the level of mystery he puts in his game design (indeed, if he just put in the character sheets in plain English we wouldn’t be having this argument, which shouldn’t be happening, since people PAID for this character – there is such a thing as consumer rights and Gachas/lootboxes being evil, which Mr. LSN, who is a progressist, seems to have forgotten is part of his ideology – indeed, we should be pestering him over this, instead of fighting) I do think, and choose to believe, he made the characters balanced. So if one has an advantage in one field, he has a comparative disadvantage in another, and vice-versa.
My argument isn’t, at its root, that one character is overall better than the other, that is what your argument is becoming, rather.
My argument is that we need the character that has the dungeoneering edge. And since Cordy has the Manor edge, Sue must have the dungeoneering edge, by process of elimination.
If you believe we must prioritize the Manor, by all means vote Cordy, Zuvatan is right at that. Just be very very sure of the infinite pets theory. My reading of the same text is completely different, which suggests a chance that you’ll be frustrated.
I do believe we are nearly dying all the time, losing levels to remorse, losing loot and equipment, and we need to Fix That before we go into a death spiral.
If Ricki dies, the story ends. Then it won’t matter what there is or what there isn’t at the Manor.
So we need direct Dungeoneering power, and Sue appears, by inference, to be (slightly) better at that. That is all.
This isn’t actually what I’m arguing, but I think it’s a fair read of what I’ve written without additional context on my thoughts. Here are some things I think Sue is better at than Cordy, in no particular order.
Sue seems to be definitively better about carrying lots of items, given her callout of having inventory space.
She probably also has basically unlimited growth potential, given that she grows directly stronger as we progress through the story. She is explicitly mentioned as not being a monster killing machine immediately, but that she can become one, so I do think that Cordy is probably better at direct killing, at least initially. So long term she might be better or just as good at killing, but I don’t think she initially will be.
Sue is directly mentioned to help us in navigating dungeon elements, so perhaps she has an ability to alter dungeon topography. Or perhaps she can simply hold tons of tools like rope, or thieves tools, to allow us to bypass challenges that are otherwise difficult to hold all of the items for.
Sue is also mentioned as being more of a support character, so I suspect that her meta benefits also empower other characters or she has abilities in dungeon that buff others. Perhaps the record of Ricki’s adventures that she records also help to buff other characters over time, albeit to a lesser degree than it buffs her?
All of the above is speculation, but based on the explicit characteristics she’s been assigned in the stream and on this page.
Given that we know each character provides benefits long term even if not taken into no more than one adventure, but that no specific mention of manor benefits was given for Sue, I suspect that her long term benefits are related to buffing other characters or to giving knowledge about dungeon challenges, rather than helping us gather or generate the resources to upgrade the manor itself. If her benefit outside of the dungeon is knowledge based, I agree that she’s a pretty powerful pick. If it’s just buffing other characters, I’m less excited about her at this moment.
Given all of our future progress is locked behind manor upgrades, I think manor upgrades are still the most important thing to pursue, and I’m more comfortable voting for a character explicitly described to help with that aspect of the game, rather than assuming that my preferred character will somehow also help almost as much as the other character in ways that she’s never even been hinted to.
Good, so we understand each other then 🙂
I mean still not really. You’ve made a bunch of explicit statements about Sue being immediately stronger in the dungeon for killing enemies than Cordy is, which don’t seem to be in line with her description as a support character. If you think she’s immediately as good at killing and also has infinite growth and also helps almost as much with the manor as Cordy, then you’re actually just as guilty as you accused me of being for assuming one character is just flat out better. She’s named Sue but she’s not a literal Mary Sue and will not be as good at everything immediately (or only marginally worse) as our other choice.
If you’re concerned about our immediate ability to address the power curve, then Sue only eventually rather than immediately becoming a monster killing machine should be a concern.
Honestly though, the big takeaway here is that both characters are strong. They will be able to fuck things up in dungeons. The only question is do we value inventory space and murky meta aspects that may include knowledge, but could be literally anything else too with no clues to point one direction or the other.
Or do we value accelerating our main and only choke point for further story content and character buffs (the manor and character bedrooms), with a side dish of powerful pets and poison?
No no, I agree that your way of putting it – Sue is weaker now, but grows stronger late, while Cordy has more now, but less growth later, is a valid way to balance them. It is what happens with Macadamia after all. I hadn’t thought of that possible way to balance them. But as long as we understand that they (should) be balanced now or in the near term, that is ok.
I still think not dying is priority. In the Guns vs Butter debate of 4X games, butter nearly always wins out – except when you are dying from lack of guns.
Regardless of which character we choose, we’ll probably end up having to take them to dungeons for a fair while.
So I still have a preference for Sue. But I respect the Cordy voters, and sincerely hope you are right.
Vote for Survival inside the Dungeon, Vote for Sue!
Misunderstandings and mistakes on mechanics are the leading cause of our struggles. Sue is our (slender) hope of fixing that, as comments indicate she may help us “navigate dungeon elements” in addition to growing more powerful as we see new things.
Remember how the Encyclopedia mentioned that other abilities than the magic lens could identify monsters? I think that Sue will have an ability to identify monsters, either at will or very frequently (using Fangirl energy, one use per dungeon we previously completed per dungeon?). This would explain gaining enduring benefit from bringing her into a couple of dungeons, as identified entries are with us for the rest of the game. The number of identified monster entries might also figure into meta scaling abilities, though that number gets much higher.
I also strongly suspect that the benefits Ricki gets for maxing out bond will also apply to Sue as a self-insert character.
I think it’s more likely that this is one of the things Ricki will gain when someone maxes bonds (since she’s supposed to get stronger). It’s possible Sue has this too, but then I’d expect that she’d be described as helping us navigate fights, rather than dungeon elements. It’s not a bad hypothesis though.
Like this post to vote for Cordy!
LSN did talk a bit more about these characters in the stream he drew them on. I tried to transcribe those details at the time. Reproducing Cordy’s info here.
“Cordy is a mushroom person.”
“While Sue was more of a meta character who will benefit from/help you in meta ways, Cordy is explicitly a pet based character”
“Even more so than Sue, Cordy is item independent. Due to their body type they actually can’t benefit from a lot of the items we’re going to find”
“Cordy is very much based around pets. Also poison damage. And they’re going to be able to help you out with the manor. Let’s leave it at that.”
Here’s my speculation based on the above and what LSN originally said. We know Cordy helps with the manor, and we know he can summon basically unlimited pets. Since pets give labor (aka 1 gold a dungeon) and gold is the main limiting item for the manor, I bet the mushrooms Cordy spawns are permanent and don’t die at the end of the dungeon (unlike Botanya’s plants). That means we could get 3 labor for every dungeon we bring Cordy into, and up to 6 if we bring no other pets. That has the potential to scale really quickly and allow us to start really raking in gold basically risk free.
The above is again speculation, but I think it’s a pretty reasonable supposition based on the details LSN just gave us and what was revealed previously on the stream.
I think Cordy can only have three mushrooms, whether they are inside or outside the manor, as was directly stated. If we try to spawn more, either one of the ones left behind will shrivel, or we will be unable to. Also, they might count for the pet limit while inside the dungeon. Doesn’t seem like he is very useful inside dungeons, then, as he cannot even defend himself much – at least Botanya can do that. We don’t know if he is a pacifist as well.
Sounds like Sue is more useful to have inside dungeons, and Cordy is more useful outside.
There’s nothing that says only he can use mushroom pets, and I think the the fact that he can summon a nearly unlimited number of them speaks to that likely being not true. In general pets are only assigned to characters while they are in a dungeon, so it wouldn’t make any sense that he could leave mushrooms behind at all if only he can have them as pets.
He can summon unlimited pets…. Like Botanya can. I do strongly suggest you look for clarification with LSN on the matter, because your reading of the ability makes him insanely OP, and knowing LSN that is Unlikely.
>There’s nothing that says only he can use mushroom pets
>Cordy is a strange mushroom creature who appeared one day from parts unknown. They can only have other mushrooms as pets,
I find the parallel amusing, but I recognize that you do use “only” correctly: Cordy can’t have non-mushroom pets, but other people could have mushroom pets.
I suspect Cordy will have absurd base stats to make up for being equipment independent. I see no reason to suspect pacifist when that is Botanya’s quirk and we have an explicit hint about using poison damage (which undead are immune to).
The undead poison immunity is a good point. It’s unclear how much of his damage is poison based. One good thing is that the undead are poison immune, and not poison resistant. Provided Cordy does reasonable base damage, he’d still be useful even with poison immune enemies. Poison resistance (like the cold resistance on Manny) could’ve lead to increased defense overall if any poison damage was done, while poison immunity just leads to 0 dmg from any poison.
That seems incredibly unlikely — completely breaking labor to the point of trivializing every other source. I know they’re powerful, but that’d be a dramatic spike — just being a source of 4 labor (3 pets + himself) seems somewhat more in line with what we’ve seen, while still being a pretty powerful buff (or even just being able to grow the labor pool by 1 per dungeon)
Additive 3 gold passive income per dungeon isn’t nearly enough to break economy. Seven dungeons total in more than a year. If we dropped $1000 on day 1 like a Kickstarter to have Cordy bud out of the cheese at Ricki’s cell and somehow accumulated a crop of 21 mushroom workers by now, that would give us 18 extra gold this dungeon – maybe enough for a down payment on one of those 50-gold rooms. We would start with 1, then three months later maybe 4.
How would it trivialize the 43 gold of produce and goal rewards we got out of this dungeon if we got an extra 3 gold at the end? The game completely changed after six dungeons. Long term thinking does put us in a more powerful position in the end, but recognize that any extrapolation assuming 5 or 10 or 20 dungeons is projecting years out.
If both characters are sort of OP, but Sue make dungeon crawling part easier while Cordy is more manor centric, i would much rather trivialise Manor building aspect of the game. The faster we get rooms for everyone and other upgrades the better.
Cordy gives us compounding benefits even when we do not take him with us into dungeon, and as we get more and more interesting characters it will feel worse and worse to feel obliged to take Sue with us.
Vote for Cordy is vote for Manor progression, and that’s where i cast mine.
also imagine Manor full of cute chibi shrooms doing cute things!!!!
I would much rather trivialize the Dungeon aspect, as that is where we are apparently way behind in power, and nearly dying every dungeon.
But for those who prefer the Manor, looks like Cordy is slightly better.
“Slightly better” Sue isn’t really mentioned as helping with the manor at all.
I suggest you reread the text.
Cordy is “probably” better. That means even LSN isn’t sure.
Cordy is probably better if we don’t want to use him a lot, which is the context that statement is made in. Literally nothing about Sue helping with the manor is mentioned, so there’s no reason to assume she’s any better than a pet, or another character, when left behind in that respect. She could still help in meta ways when left behind, but nothing about manor help in particular was suggested.
Yes, that is my point. While LSN is hiding the characters’ true abilities (at the stream’s very beginning he mentions, paraphrasing , that he didn’t want there to be a landslide voting for Sue due to her being the Tuvi-expy, so he basically would play up Cordy a bit, and play down Sue a little.)
The fact that he didn’t mention specific Manor abilities is not an evidence of absence. And the “probably” is evidence for any mechanical edge between the two characters being very slight.
Again, you are ignoring the context of that quote. If our plan is to use these characters exactly once and never again, Cordy was said to be probably the better choice. If that is not our plan, than any statement about which character is probably better for that plan is irrelevant.
I have a very different memory of your bit about Sue and Tuvi. He said that he couldn’t make Sue Tuvi because then she’d just win outright because she’s Tuvi, which has nothing to do with the mechanics of either Cordy or Sue and everything to do with it not being a fair contest when a popular character from a previous welcomic is pitted against a new unknown character.
Ew no he’s clearly a human covered in fungus with eyes screaming for the sweet release of death. Just say no to mind-controlling fungus overlords.
(why why why did you have to name him Cordy? :sob:)
Jerf stop scaring people, we have 0 proof of this.
Plus, a fungalized human would be able to use weapons and armor, but Cordy cant
That’s on account of the head and the withered hands.
HE SO CREEPY CAN’T SLEEP MUSHROOMS WILL ROT MY BRAIN AND PUPPET MY BODY
I feel the same Jerf, at least as passionately about the name in particular. it’s like he’s trying to ruin Mario for me
I must concur, the names of both characters seem designed to make people dislike them. Knowing LSN, that is likely on purpose, so as to discourage their use.
Cordy looks like a cross between Toad from Super Mario, and a Plump Helmet Man from Dwarf Fortress. This is too good of an opportunity to pass up. Cordy Urist McToadface, whose princess is in another castle/dungeon.
General/Mixed secret character info from the stream
“Secret characters do not gain bond points, they do not have greater stories associated with them.”
“They are both strong, to the point where you will feel bad about using them ever.”
“And umm, cause as I said Sue helps you out in meta ways, and Cordy helps you out with the manor – even if you only take them into a dungeon once or twice each ever, they will be paying dividends, even while they are not in use. If you don’t want to ‘cheat’ at dungeon eyes and use the OP secret characters but still get some marginal benefit, Cordy is probably the better choice”
The second statement actually appears to be a lie. :-p
Bug Haul IV
This is the best.
If Cordy can help withthe Manor, like make it easier to build rooms that we need to unlock bond dungeons, I’ll take that over Sue and easier dungeons anytime. Also Cordy’s got points for style.
If we die, we won’t get any rooms. And we are nearly dying every dungeon.
That’s what adventurers do. No one actually died so far.
VOTE FOR CORDY, HE’S A REALLY FUN GUY
We haven’t entered any dungeon LSN considered dangerous yet.
The Manor is a semi-exception – because it was designed to be completable (if the dice ghost didn’t decide to target Ricki five times, which strikes me as reckless design).
The Fun Farm nearly killed us completely, and now we are going to the Zombie Plague Catacomb even the Guard didn’t dare enter.
Regardless of which secret character we get, we must take them to the next dungeon.
All as consequences of our decisions and actions. Which is good! It makes the decisions meaningful.
I agree that we should take the secret character to the next dungeon, because I can’t wait to see them do the things that they do.
Sure, but, see, if people are voting Cordy because they think we can afford to leave him at the manor, I think they are going to be in for a disappointment.
As long as people are well-informed about all the vote aspects, I don’t mind which character wins, really. I am advocating for Sue because Cordy was the only one being advocated for (including by LSN who only gave tangible numbers to him, which is sus), with unwarranted extrapolation from the surprisingly clear text, even. So I felt the need to balance the scales so people won’t be disappointed later on.
I totally respect the vote based on aesthetics, by the way.
Minor quibble, however:
Our decisions and actions are often being done in the dark from lack of knowledge of rules and meta elements. That strips some of the meaning from them, and Sue’s “helps navigate dungeon elements” thing is slender hope that problem may be alleviated a bit. It is slender enough I don’t mind people voting Cordy because of other factors, but it is there and should be weighed by voters.
I’m leaning slightly in favor of Sue here. Siv’s case for using her as a temporary crutch to ensure dungeon survivability (which we have been struggling with) until we catch up to the difficulty curve is pretty persuasive, despite the opportunity cost of missing out on the accelerated Manor development Cordy offers. My vote is partially predicated on the assumption that Cordy can join later after LSN reaches another Ko-Fi donation milestone.
I would normally oppose lowering a game’s difficulty with such a character but I am still shook after Chapter 7 given we almost lost one of the smalls because so many readers want to pick up every item possible for gold. If readers want to attempt to full-clear dungeons while having Kamau tank literally every attack with Interpose, the extra inventory space is invaluable.
Cordy will help us with our Gold issues, even when we do not take him into dungeons. Allowing us to be less perfect about making sure we have the best possible loot combination.
Sue will only work when we have her with us in team. Taking space a more interesting character would take.
As bad as Lara level ups are, i would like to use her from time to time.
Again, that reading is incorrect and would make Sue a trap option.
LSN mentioned that there are no trap options.
3 pets worth of labour won’t solve the gold scarcity on its own.
LSN said Cordy is — probably — better for those who don’t want to use the secret characters. But we DO need to use them for now. We are steadily losing on advancement and the power curve is steep.
Just… Remember you guys are voting on characters which only have a slight edge on each other in certain things. Not in the “solution to war and world hunger” vs a “meh character” . Don’t be disappointed later when you find Cordy won’t solve everything just by chilling at the Manor.
They’re both going to be great and feel really satisfying to use like taking the sci-fi vehicle out for a spin. Pay-to-win character go BRRRRRR
Honestly? I doubt they will be as powerful as LSN claims they will. I think they will just not have glaring flaws. His difficulty calibrator has broken a WHILE ago.
Correction: In fact his difficulty calibrator isn’t broken. I was just having wrong expectations. His expectations were that we would have lost someone by now.
I think Zuvatan has a really good point here. If we can stop worrying about whether the Manor will be able to progress at all, you, Siv, yourself should be happy with that: on the one hand, we get story progression, and also if people take this into account it will encourage us to play safer and take less risks for the gold. So I’m going to be happy about either one that gets picked. (OF COURSE I want to see what Sue does and see if she helps make sense of the dungeons, that would be awesome yes please.)
I see you saying the characters only have ‘a slight edge’ over each other in certain aspects? What is this based on? As long as we’re making guesses based on what we know of the game designer— I think they are built radically different from one another because LSN likes to design things to be and feel different. And remembering LSN has a tendency to understate things yeah, I think Cordy will actually be of significant help with the manor if we try.
Well, I bow to your input, then, and retract my vote in the face of evidence (I am not being ironic here – you are the best source for LSN intel we have) If you think, from experience playing with LSN, that Cordy will be better given our situation and goals then I vote for the better option. 🙂
People in general and especially us tend to play riskier when we feel safer (people drive faster wearing seatbelts). Case in point, not interposing with 4 Remorse and 0 Def because we’re on the way out.
We were still trying to grab everything in the Kobold Warrens and Manor when we had nothing left to buy, and in the Manor this cost us a lot of money. If Cordy had the ability “gain 1 gold per LSN Patreon dollar per dungeon” then we’d pivot to grabbing everything to hold onto things for later, keeping those cool blessing treasures.
Confirmed that both secret characters can be unlocked for sufficient money.
Provided we pay to win, I anticipate Sue will be more powerful at that point by us completing more dungeons, discovering more items, and lensing more monsters.
Look. One of the characters is a GIANT MUSHROOM. What else do we need to know?
(Picture of Sokka screaming “FRIENDLY MUSHROOM”)
Vote for Cordy! Get your free mushroom pet!
Stream notes preview: if the vote is still tied tomorrow, the only fair thing to do is make everyone angry by creating a third character which isn’t as good.
Also, don’t worry too much. There isn’t a bad option here.
Further notes:
“You will like both characters”
Manor income is secondary, dungeon is primary.
Getting mushrooms for everyone in dungeon so we can take them to manor would crowd out regular pets.
Mushrooms are apparently individually weak.
Dungeons will never be easy, LSN expected us to have lost people by now and/or a game over. I am not sure not taking the secret character to the dungeon will be conducive to us seeing the end of the story.
I don’t think there was any stream commentary on Cordy’s pet strength.
You are actually correct. I cannot retract that, due to WordPress, but I thought Sickass was referring to the stream when that was said. The others, however, I did listen to LSN saying them firsthand.
(And LSN decided he will just roll a dice to cut the tie if it comes to it)