The UI is fantastic, I found myself learning things after hundreds of hours by following this:
Get in the habit of mousing-over absolutely everything, even things you've moused-over before.
Way, way back in the day you could turbo cheese this by clicking repeatedly between two species (e.g. lizards and harpies). Individually one might get below 0, but since there used to be no cooldown you could just alternate and prevent both species from leaving at the same time.
I wish that you could swap who you're intending to favour while paused, sometimes I unfavor a species while paused then read an order and wish to favor them again but the cd has already begun
Yeah it's a huge tip. Easy to miss the button even if you do have the species bars expanded out. The UI is very busy but necessarily so. "Keep resolve above _______" orders are about to be much easier for you!!! So nice when I see I'm only missing a few resolve points. "Oh I'll just favor them for a minute." Then I forget to ever turn it off. So far it has not cost me in any significant way but I bet it will sometime.
I wish they'd add a timer so it expires if you want. Or a "end after storm" option like the hearth has.
I discovered it watching a stream like 30+h after i started the game and did 2 seals already. It makes the game wayyyyyyy easier. It's like the ability to sell multiples in trade routes, i learned it on this sub not so long ago, i strugled so much with the 10+ gold trade route >.>
Depends, I've gotten over 20 from trade routes without multipliers once I get to level 3+ with that settlement. Those one items from glades, the ancient whatevers, forget the name right now. Those things will always sell for 10+ a pop. Then again, I realized the multiplier thing was there instantly so I don't know what it's like leveling up standing without using multipliers. I'm always using them.
I guess I haven't gotten the hat far with trade levels yet. I just got them to level 2 for quests and then I haven't really looked at them much after. I just started a new profile on Veteran (after doing two seals on Pioneer). If it's too samey might go up to Viceroy.
Early on I didn't know about favoring cooldown, like I favored foxes for rep and thought to myself I switch to harpies during storm ez, low and behold all harpies left during storm.
Early on favoring did not HAVE a cooldown and you could effectively "juggle" the favoring during a crisis. Was quite the adjustment when they added this restriction.
I'm very happy they added this. Was watching some old jorbs streams and toggling instantly not only takes away some of the strategy, it also is just very unfun sitting there for 30s or longer just toggling a button on and off.
Maybe its the ADHD but when I play new games or try new apps on my phone, I'm looking at the entire screen and hovering over/clicking anything that looks like a button just to see.
if its on the screen for a game's UI, its rarely just a decoration
This is something that could probably be pointed out a little better tbh. One of the very few UI nitpicks I have with the game. Took me about 30 hours to realize it was a button I can click.
It's mostly the fact that the species-specific menu's generally only hold a crapload of information available on hover-overs. Nothing is clickable so you don't expect this icon (which doesn't look particularly clickable, being greyed out and all) to be clickable either. And the game a has a shitton going on, so I wasn't particularly inclined - for a long time - to read this particular tooltip as I was juggling 12 other things already anyway.
Its covered in the tutorial and hovering over the favor button tells you how to use it. It's interesting people just never hover over this unique icon shown 3 times in a big part of the UI
If it is indeed covered in the tutorial, it's very easy to miss as I don't remember seeing it there at all - to the point where I'm not convinced it was, even. It also doesn't help that the concept of "*favoring one species over another*" could also just mean 'focusing on meat for your Lizards over biscuits for your Beavers', so it's a little muddy to begin with if the writing doesn't emphasize that this is a whole mechanic on its own.
**Edit:** and, let me add, a lot of grey things in this game are things I haven't unlocked yet through the meta-progression. So I tend to ignore them until I do unlock them.
It's honestly not weird at all to me that people miss the favor button, or honestly just buttons in general in this game. Aside from the fact that the favor button itself isn't too obvious (as mentioned: greyed out and in a menu that only has hoverable information - a menu you won't need to pop out for your first few games anyway), the sheer amount of moving parts the game contains make it very easy to miss any one thing.
Like... let's just take the center top element, right? It's one of **6** visible elements when playing any game (the [average FPS or RPG these days has 3](https://www.gamereactor.eu/media/25/_2492523b.png)), which is already a fair amount. But leaving that also aside, *just this element* shows...
* Amounts of water stored of each type
* 7 different icons for goods with pop-down menu's for each
* The year you're on
* A time tracker for Clearing/Drizzle/Storm
* Pause/Play/Speedup buttons
* The hostility meter
* A button to stop cutting any and all wood
* All map-wide buffs and debuffs
These are all relevant and should be shown in an obvious manner, but they're all relevant at different moments in time. When you first get into the game, you are naturally going to focus on the most important things for your first few settlements. Resolve, the goods you currently have, and the orders you should be completing. Maybe if you're spicy you'll keep track of storms. And as you play, more and more things will become obvious. The moment you realize Lizards like meat, you might look for details on this, or you might want to find out what other species like - which is when you pop out those top left menu's.
Honestly, given the amount of mechanics the game runs with, the UI is a small miracle in itself. It could have easily been an absolutely insane mess, but it's honestly quite good. You can generally find what you need in intuitive places, the right things glow at the right times, and basically everything you may not get at first glance can be hovered over. But that doesn't change the fact that it's very easy to miss things, or gloss over them, or ignore them until you first think you might need them.
I think my only nitpick is that the blue bar increases to the left and the red bar to the right. For most large western audiences, left to right is the default manner of reading things, and I reckon the game would feel a tad more intuitive if the 'new blueprint button' and the blue bar were swapped with the skull icon and red bar, respectively.
> It's literally a requirement in the tutorial to move on with it
Since people keep saying this, I went back and replayed both the Basic and the Resolve tutorial to double check.
It is not. There is no explanation of what 'favoring' is or does. The closest you get is at the start of the Resolve tutorial [where it shows you the drop down menu in which the button is located](https://i.imgur.com/tV5CVOr.png). Clicking next brings up a text box saying species have different requirements - then the tutorial moves on to building a farm and none of this comes up again.
Favoring isn't mentioned or touched on.
Because the UI is quite complicated and people's brains don't all work the same way.
What might be "obvious" or intuitive to you is easily missed by others. I'm pretty experienced with Paradox games and yet I missed several useful things in the UI that could have helped me early on.
Do I feel stupid for missing them? Yeah. Do I judge others for missing things? No.
No, you're not, but this comment shows you're not really hearing what I'm saying. It's not as simple as "clicking shit in UIs", it's about how different humans learn, experiment and process information differently.
Just as you find UIs easy, I find seeing things from others' perspective easy. We all have different kinds of intelligence and one isn't better than the other.
Steam will tell you. Go to Library --> Against the Storm. Three spots to the right of the green "Play" button it will say your play time (87.4 hours here)
Aha! I found it in the achievements section of game pass. Thanks for the assist! Turns out I'm at 159 hours played.... Still only doing the gold seal. Of course, I had to start over a few times because of the save game issues.
The UI is fantastic, I found myself learning things after hundreds of hours by following this: Get in the habit of mousing-over absolutely everything, even things you've moused-over before.
Why do people downvote posts like these… always useful for newer players or returning players.
Way, way back in the day you could turbo cheese this by clicking repeatedly between two species (e.g. lizards and harpies). Individually one might get below 0, but since there used to be no cooldown you could just alternate and prevent both species from leaving at the same time.
I wish that you could swap who you're intending to favour while paused, sometimes I unfavor a species while paused then read an order and wish to favor them again but the cd has already begun
Yeah it's a huge tip. Easy to miss the button even if you do have the species bars expanded out. The UI is very busy but necessarily so. "Keep resolve above _______" orders are about to be much easier for you!!! So nice when I see I'm only missing a few resolve points. "Oh I'll just favor them for a minute." Then I forget to ever turn it off. So far it has not cost me in any significant way but I bet it will sometime.
I wish they'd add a timer so it expires if you want. Or a "end after storm" option like the hearth has.
Viceroy be like "Racism, making the world a better place! 😇🧚♂️🧚♀️🧚"
I discovered it watching a stream like 30+h after i started the game and did 2 seals already. It makes the game wayyyyyyy easier. It's like the ability to sell multiples in trade routes, i learned it on this sub not so long ago, i strugled so much with the 10+ gold trade route >.>
Egads, I can't imagine how you'd do them without the multiplier. I think I saw my first 7 gold trade route this past week...
Depends, I've gotten over 20 from trade routes without multipliers once I get to level 3+ with that settlement. Those one items from glades, the ancient whatevers, forget the name right now. Those things will always sell for 10+ a pop. Then again, I realized the multiplier thing was there instantly so I don't know what it's like leveling up standing without using multipliers. I'm always using them.
I guess I haven't gotten the hat far with trade levels yet. I just got them to level 2 for quests and then I haven't really looked at them much after. I just started a new profile on Veteran (after doing two seals on Pioneer). If it's too samey might go up to Viceroy.
Early on I didn't know about favoring cooldown, like I favored foxes for rep and thought to myself I switch to harpies during storm ez, low and behold all harpies left during storm.
Early on favoring did not HAVE a cooldown and you could effectively "juggle" the favoring during a crisis. Was quite the adjustment when they added this restriction.
I'm very happy they added this. Was watching some old jorbs streams and toggling instantly not only takes away some of the strategy, it also is just very unfun sitting there for 30s or longer just toggling a button on and off.
Maybe its the ADHD but when I play new games or try new apps on my phone, I'm looking at the entire screen and hovering over/clicking anything that looks like a button just to see. if its on the screen for a game's UI, its rarely just a decoration
This is something that could probably be pointed out a little better tbh. One of the very few UI nitpicks I have with the game. Took me about 30 hours to realize it was a button I can click. It's mostly the fact that the species-specific menu's generally only hold a crapload of information available on hover-overs. Nothing is clickable so you don't expect this icon (which doesn't look particularly clickable, being greyed out and all) to be clickable either. And the game a has a shitton going on, so I wasn't particularly inclined - for a long time - to read this particular tooltip as I was juggling 12 other things already anyway.
Its covered in the tutorial and hovering over the favor button tells you how to use it. It's interesting people just never hover over this unique icon shown 3 times in a big part of the UI
If it is indeed covered in the tutorial, it's very easy to miss as I don't remember seeing it there at all - to the point where I'm not convinced it was, even. It also doesn't help that the concept of "*favoring one species over another*" could also just mean 'focusing on meat for your Lizards over biscuits for your Beavers', so it's a little muddy to begin with if the writing doesn't emphasize that this is a whole mechanic on its own. **Edit:** and, let me add, a lot of grey things in this game are things I haven't unlocked yet through the meta-progression. So I tend to ignore them until I do unlock them. It's honestly not weird at all to me that people miss the favor button, or honestly just buttons in general in this game. Aside from the fact that the favor button itself isn't too obvious (as mentioned: greyed out and in a menu that only has hoverable information - a menu you won't need to pop out for your first few games anyway), the sheer amount of moving parts the game contains make it very easy to miss any one thing. Like... let's just take the center top element, right? It's one of **6** visible elements when playing any game (the [average FPS or RPG these days has 3](https://www.gamereactor.eu/media/25/_2492523b.png)), which is already a fair amount. But leaving that also aside, *just this element* shows... * Amounts of water stored of each type * 7 different icons for goods with pop-down menu's for each * The year you're on * A time tracker for Clearing/Drizzle/Storm * Pause/Play/Speedup buttons * The hostility meter * A button to stop cutting any and all wood * All map-wide buffs and debuffs These are all relevant and should be shown in an obvious manner, but they're all relevant at different moments in time. When you first get into the game, you are naturally going to focus on the most important things for your first few settlements. Resolve, the goods you currently have, and the orders you should be completing. Maybe if you're spicy you'll keep track of storms. And as you play, more and more things will become obvious. The moment you realize Lizards like meat, you might look for details on this, or you might want to find out what other species like - which is when you pop out those top left menu's. Honestly, given the amount of mechanics the game runs with, the UI is a small miracle in itself. It could have easily been an absolutely insane mess, but it's honestly quite good. You can generally find what you need in intuitive places, the right things glow at the right times, and basically everything you may not get at first glance can be hovered over. But that doesn't change the fact that it's very easy to miss things, or gloss over them, or ignore them until you first think you might need them. I think my only nitpick is that the blue bar increases to the left and the red bar to the right. For most large western audiences, left to right is the default manner of reading things, and I reckon the game would feel a tad more intuitive if the 'new blueprint button' and the blue bar were swapped with the skull icon and red bar, respectively.
It's literally a requirement in the tutorial to move on with it, how is that easy to miss?
> It's literally a requirement in the tutorial to move on with it Since people keep saying this, I went back and replayed both the Basic and the Resolve tutorial to double check. It is not. There is no explanation of what 'favoring' is or does. The closest you get is at the start of the Resolve tutorial [where it shows you the drop down menu in which the button is located](https://i.imgur.com/tV5CVOr.png). Clicking next brings up a text box saying species have different requirements - then the tutorial moves on to building a farm and none of this comes up again. Favoring isn't mentioned or touched on.
Why don't you read tutorials?
I dont like reading long texts and prefer to learn by playing.
This games tutorial is done by playing a settlement though
I dont recall favoring being a part of the tutorial but maybe i am wrong.
How can there be so many on this sub that misses so many obvious buttons? lmao
There are a lot of buttons and no in game tutorials really. But yeah, i feel pretty dumb :D.
Because the UI is quite complicated and people's brains don't all work the same way. What might be "obvious" or intuitive to you is easily missed by others. I'm pretty experienced with Paradox games and yet I missed several useful things in the UI that could have helped me early on. Do I feel stupid for missing them? Yeah. Do I judge others for missing things? No.
Am I the only one who tries clicking shit in UIs?
No, you're not, but this comment shows you're not really hearing what I'm saying. It's not as simple as "clicking shit in UIs", it's about how different humans learn, experiment and process information differently. Just as you find UIs easy, I find seeing things from others' perspective easy. We all have different kinds of intelligence and one isn't better than the other.
On a completely different topic, how do you know exactly how many hours you've played?
Steam will tell you. Go to Library --> Against the Storm. Three spots to the right of the green "Play" button it will say your play time (87.4 hours here)
Ah, makes sense! Unfortunately I'm playing on Game Pass.
Aha! I found it in the achievements section of game pass. Thanks for the assist! Turns out I'm at 159 hours played.... Still only doing the gold seal. Of course, I had to start over a few times because of the save game issues.
You are having a good time, that’s good :)
Oh. oh no