Also, spoilers for this quest, but how much does this Ethalian's necklace cost?! I have 145 in my personal bank account!!

The tip about sending characters mentions it on page 3 (you can see all tips in the tips-menu which is accessed from the pause-menu), but to put it short: light boxes means they are "likely" to succeed, dark boxes means they are "less likely" to succeed.

However, even those with dark boxes usually have a percentage chance to succeed, and those with light boxes usually have a percentage chance to fail (which is why it's called "likely success", instead of "guaranteed success"). If it feels like some characters with light boxes don't fit the task, like Faye in this case, it's a fair chance that they don't - they just have skills that are within a certain range that the game checks for. Or, in some cases, they have the correct "skills" and thus receive a light box, but are guaranteed to fail for other reasons, for example by not being able to read or write.

The necklace is very expensive - you're about halfway there.

Hope that helps!

I couldn't help but notice checks are both hard coded (as far as I can tell) so there's no random element, and information hidden in their hang outs or bios can also give you an idea who is best suited for what. Just some tips if you need some help with certain checks:

-Kieran, who you get with the ship docks, can pass a frankly absurd number of checks, especially when related to guile, charisma, or seafairing, and a lot more. I actually had success with him sending him out on rescue missions and in one case I needed an archer.

-Erewen is surprisingly useful at unexpected things, especially if you're trying to make an alliance with Urtua and pick asking Ethal for aid. They can actually pass two unique checks on that route.

-If you want a healer on early and don't want to wait to have the funds for the infirmary, build a bath house. Amalie is surprisingly great at most medical checks in my experience.

-The brothel gets you Euphemia, who actually has some magical and alchemic knowledge, not as much as a full mage or alchemist, but enough for several unique checks. If you're doing a voidist run, she's very much recommended. Just build a marketplace or black market for more trading options to make up for lacking stables.

EDIT: Almost forgot that the event with the fashion designer was bugged for me, so everyone appeared in dark boxes, even characters clearly suited for the given picked option. I did still succeed but the fact that everyone was in a dark box seems like a bug or oversight. Only time that happened though.

There's actual percentage chances? Hrrm, not a design decision I like in this sort of game. This is mostly a visual novel where there aren't enough strategic decisions to offset the RNG element.


That leaves the question of why people who can barely use a pen would be good at forging documents, but cool, good to know.


Also that Ethalian prick STILL betrays you even when you give her the 300 coins for the necklace. Luckily I was able to do a human document for free with the librarian. Just goes to show how untrustworthy those Ethalians are! >:o

Originally posted by Typical_Name:

There's actual percentage chances? Hrrm, not a design decision I like in this sort of game. This is mostly a visual novel where there aren't enough strategic decisions to offset the RNG element.


That leaves the question of why people who can barely use a pen would be good at forging documents, but cool, good to know.


Also that Ethalian prick STILL betrays you even when you give her the 300 coins for the necklace. Luckily I was able to do a human document for free with the librarian. Just goes to show how untrustworthy those Ethalians are! >:o

Minor and mid spoilers ahead, be careful.

Some characters are hella op and successful at most of the task. They are gravedigger, guard captain, pirate and university lady
Also, some tasks are very specific. Eg to heal someone it's pretty obvious whom you should pick. Or it's better to pick viking to talk to vikings.
There is simple logics here. strong character is better at fighting, sketchy is good at stealing and spying, mysterious mage is good at casting
My ultimate champion is Kieran he can complete most of the tasks IMO
Hope it helps.

In the earlier stages of development, only characters who were guaranteed to succeed had light boxes. That removed all sense of strategy, risk, suspense and fun, since you would never fail as long as there was at least 1 light box. It also presented an issue when there were checks later in the code that looked at requirements that the boxes can't look at (for example, whether a character can read or not), basically making a light box "lie" in some cases (a character could pass the checks presented in the boxes, but still fail checks after that). So we changed it so that instead of only showing characters that are guaranteed to succeed, it also shows characters who don't quite meet the requirements, but are fairly close. Therefore, we called it "likely success" instead of "guaranteed success", as it was called earlier. That way, you have to know the townsfolk to a certain extent to be able to estimate who is actually guaranteed to succeed and who is a bit off. That added the strategy, risk, suspense and therefore fun that was missing earlier. A core philosophy of the game is that you should fail sometimes, but if you always know which characters will make it, you will never fail - unless you don't have the right characters.

The RNG in choosing characters only comes in when you pick a character who doesn't meet the requirements that the boxes check for. If they meet the requirements, they will always succeed (unless there are specific checks after that, like the reading-thing). If they don't, they have a percentage chance that's unique to the task in question. That percentage is higher for low-risk situations, and lower for high-risk situations. For example, doing anything when attempting to form an alliance will have a small chance of succeeding for characters who don't meet the specific requirements, whilst breaking up a squabble on the street is pretty easy for anyone. There are, however, a few situations where the percentage chance is 0 for those who don't meet the requirements. That's usually related to using magic, since those that can't use magic won't be able to complete the task no matter what.

To summarize, the RNG when sending characters out just ensures that things aren't too difficult and that the player isn't completely screwed if they don't have characters that are guaranteed to succeed from the start.

It isn't a bug that makes all the boxes in the fashion event dark - it's simply one of the few cases (perhaps the only, can't remember) when all the requirements are at their highest point, meaning that no one will meet the requirements. There are also no characters that are specifically "singled out" as special successes, which means that they will succeed even if they don't meet all the requirements. The code only allows for a maximum of 3 characters to be singled out that way, and since more characters than that can be successful models, we didn't want to use that feature at all.

So making the boxes dark was a deliberate choice, since the success in this event isn't mainly based on the stats that are normally used, but the character's visual appearance. In other words, the boxes can't check for the actual success. Instead, the check that sees if it's a fitting model occurs later in the code. So in this instance, we could either have had to make all the boxes light or all the boxes dark. We decided to make them dark in order to force the player to think about their choice more carefully. If all the boxes had been light, the player would have been under less mental pressure, since it would look like things were "easier" than they actually were (aka, the player would assume that they could pick just about anyone and still succeed, which isn't the case). Avoiding this felt especially important since there are some situations when the player is presented with only light boxes and it really doesn't matter who they choose, besides personal preference. For example, if you hire a mercenary to protect a townsperson, all the boxes are light since all the requirements are put at the lowest point (meaning that everyone will succeed), since the player should be free to protect whoever they want. Since we didn't want to make the fashion situation resemble those (since you actually can fail when sending characters out during the fashion event), we opted for making the boxes dark instead.

Hopefully, that explains some things!

Swell, that sort of makes sense. :)

Eh, the fashion designer event should probably still have light boxes for the obvious choices, I feel, because it would be consistent with the rest of the game. It genuinely does come off as a bug from the player perspective because we don't have access to background numbers and don't understand why the boxes that should clearly be light aren't (I mean specifically with the unique model choice, since there's only about three or four characters who would naturally match with the description given by the designer, and their names also being dark gives weird signals to the player).

To put it another way: The light boxes, to me while I'm playing, tell me this person has the skills and background to have a good chance at solving the problem, at least compared to other selections I have available. When the game's text directly tells you information that makes you think of three potential characters or so before you see your selections and then you get to the screen and every name is dark, it genuinely feels out of step with the rest of the game, like the game is directly lying to you about what is expected to have a successful check.

Originally posted by JKDarkseid:

Eh, the fashion designer event should probably still have light boxes for the obvious choices, I feel, because it would be consistent with the rest of the game. It genuinely does come off as a bug from the player perspective because we don't have access to background numbers and don't understand why the boxes that should clearly be light aren't (I mean specifically with the unique model choice, since there's only about three or four characters who would naturally match with the description given by the designer, and their names also being dark gives weird signals to the player).

To put it another way: The light boxes, to me while I'm playing, tell me this person has the skills and background to have a good chance at solving the problem, at least compared to other selections I have available. When the game's text directly tells you information that makes you think of three potential characters or so before you see your selections and then you get to the screen and every name is dark, it genuinely feels out of step with the rest of the game, like the game is directly lying to you about what is expected to have a successful check.

We have changed the boxes now so that all are light (there are still too many viable models to add them as the only choices, and we also think that having only those as light boxes would remove the fun from that event). While we still think there was sound reasoning behind having the boxes dark, player input is much more valuable than our speculations as developers during the development. So since it comes off as a bug, we changed the color. The event still functions exactly the same. The change should be out sometime next week. Thanks for the feedback!