Yeah, your MC is pretty much justified to hold them in contempt lol. My MC doesn’t like him any more either, but it’s admittably more personal from his perspective.
1 Like
@idonotlikeusernames I completely agree. Imagine if stress could be used to turn a blind eye to brutality “hey guys, I know I take pleasure in being cruel to be helots/people in general and my sister is a rapist, but we are under a great deal of stress please respect us!”. Doesn’t make sense.
For all the stress his family may have, he still is a wealthy aristocrat who lives comfortably and sheltered. His stress is not 1/10 of the helots who fear Harrowing or just the casual brutality in general. Hector and his sister deserve nothing but contempt.
Helots are the real victims.
7 Likes
Hello! This is @SilasLock 's partner. I’m posting this from my account on their behalf since SilasLock does not have image permissions, unfortunately. 
Here is the message!
Hello again! Been very busy, sorry for the extremely late replies. 
Thank you so much for answering our questions about helot elders!
Still fixing bugs and wonky bits of continuity whenever I find them. Please do let me know whatever you can replicate/diagnose!
I’m also still happy to hear suggestions for improvements to Game 1, though I’d offer a warning note that I’m unlikely to implement them, however good they are–my priority right now needs to be Game 2.
But if that’s not unduly discouraging, please feel free to give me your feedback. I certainly won’t be annoyed or put off.
That’s not discouraging at all! It makes sense that Game 2 is the priority right now, wouldn’t have it any other way. 
On that note, my partner and I have compiled a comprehensive list of the bugs/continuity errors/suggestions we encountered on our recent playthroughs, complete with screenshots! Hope they prove helpful.
- Tithe barn raids
When you send your rebels on a tithe barn raid, there is an option to send out scouts to find another tithe barn to raid for the future. If you don’t have enough people to send out, your deputy says that they will send scouts out the next week. However, this causes a loop of scouts to be perpetually sent out in all subsequent weeks, and none of these deployed scouts ever appear come back. This leads to situations where you can have 60 scouts out at the same time but only 10 are accounted for. Here’s what the game says after this process has run for several weeks:
The scouts never come back and report having found a new tithe barn. The recap text is convinced that the original 10 are still searching, week after week. However, although it says that “10 scouts are searching for a tithe barn,” it also says that a much larger number are out on missions.
Here is a more detailed log of each week during the run in which the above screenshot was taken:
On the first week, I raided a tithe barn, and sent out scouts without having enough to scout that week.
week 2: 150 adults, 19 on grain run, 16 too sick, ‘10’ scouting for a tithe barn, 91 available.
week 3: 150 adults, 2 on grain run, 16 too sick, 20 scouts out (‘10’ scouting for a tithe barn, no mention of any other scouts) 7 caring for sick, 95 available
week 4: 147 adults, 5 on grain run, 19 too sick, 30 scouts out (‘10’ scouting for a tithe barn), 8 caring for sick, 78 available
week 5: 144 adults, 20 on grain run, 17 too sick, 40 scouts out (‘10’ scouting for a tithe barn), 7 caring for sick, 50 available
week 6: 142 adults, 16 on grain run, 21 too sick, 50 scouts out (‘10’ scouting for a tithe barn), 8 caring for sick, 38 available
week 7: 142 adults, 17 on grain run, 23 too sick, 60 scouts out (‘10’ scouting for a tithe barn), 9 caring for sick, 23 available
By week 8, we had dissolved into anarchy.
While we haven’t tested it, it’s very possible that the same bug occurs when you send out more scouts following other kinds of grain barn raids. This same bug might also occur for mule raids, though we haven’t tested this either.
- Locked out of mule raids
When you successfully raid for mules, the game prompts you to send out additional scouts to find mules. After this screen, it takes the player back to the main menu for winter activities.
However, the player is then unable to return to the mule raid screen, even if they have uncompleted mule-related activities they could initiate.
Here’s an example playthrough:
First, we sent scouts to find Alastors or Ecclesiasts with mules you could steal in week 1.
When those scouts reported back in week 3, we raided the Alastors (but not the Ecclesiasts) for mules.
Afterwards, we said that we didn’t want to send additional scouts out looking for mules.
This immediately took us to the main winter menu.
As you can see, the option to acquire mules is missing. However, over the course of the playthrough thus far, we did not send Breden or ourselves to beg for mules, and we could also send additional scouts to look for mules to steal. These options should in theory be available to the player. We suspect that removing the “acquire more mules” option is being triggered upon the wrong event, and that it should instead trigger when there are no more possible mule-related actions the player can take that week.
- Buying bushels with not enough wealth
During Winter, I often choose to sell mules at the start of the week in order to have enough wealth to send out a barley train. However, if you don’t have enough wealth to buy a single bushel, but do have mules to sell, the game simply says “you can’t buy even a single bushel” and does not give you an option to sell mules.
When the above screenshot was taken, we had enough mules to sell, but not enough wealth to buy any barley:
If you have enough wealth to buy at least 1 bushel, it gives you the option to sell mules to buy a much larger shipment of barley. These options should be available to a player that any mules to sell.
There’s a clever workaround for this bug, but it requires that the player knows about the bug in advance: if the player foresees that they’re going to end a week with less wealth than it takes to buy a single bushel, they can proactively sell 1 mule before the week ends (so as to get a few Drachems), and avoid the bugged screen altogether. However, even though I’m an experienced XoR player, I still get tripped up by this bug if I don’t notice that my cash reserves are running low. This has meant the death of more than one rebellion I’ve managed, since it means I’m forced to go without a barley train when I was counting on selling a mule to buy enough food for my band that week.
- Input boxes on mobile
Entering an invalid input to a number box causes the text box to “change.” The text box will no longer visually update when you type something into it, and it doesn’t permit you to press the submit button. The input box does, however, contain (invisibly) whatever invalid input you originally typed into it.
We’ve included some screenshots of a test run we did, showcasing this problem.
On this screen, the maximum number of bushels we could purchase was 22:
We inputted an illegal number of bushels (i.e. 24) and submitted, either via pressing the “next” button on the game screen or the “go” button on the keyboard. It then produces the following error message:
So far, the game is behaving as expected. However, after closing the error message, tapping on the input box again opens the keyboard, but typing does not change what is displayed inside of the box.
Despite this, the original input of 24 is still (invisibly) stored in the text box. The following screenshot is what occurs after we press “5.” As you can see, the autocomplete feature seems to think we’re trying to type in the number “245,” which indicates that the number “24” was still in the text box following our attempted submission, and that we just added a “5” to the end of the string:
Pressing the submit button no longer does anything when the text box is in this state. Closing the app or returning to the title screen fixes the issue. It’s very likely this is a bug with ChoiceScript, not with XoR itself, but we wanted to include it just in case it is XoR-specific, or if you wanted to forward it to CoG.
- Family crest
The “pick your family crest” option when playing as an aristocrat gives you the option to type in your own crest. However, on mobile, the first character is by default capitalized when you begin typing into the text box. Even as an experienced player, this still trips me up—I have moments where I’ll ask my family crest to be a “Shield” and it will literally end up saying my family crest is a “Shield” and not a “shield.” A newcomer doesn’t know whether the first letter will be uncapitalized behind-the-scenes, so they’re liable to mess this up as well.
This happens on iPhone 5Cs and 8s, though it likely occurs on other mobile devices. We’ve included some screenshots of the problem. As you can see, the shift key is pressed by default when we open up the text box to input our family crest as a “Shield”:
This produces a capitalized family crest:
It’s possible that some players might want to have their family crest be capitalized, like “Eiffel Tower,” so defaulting the first letter to be lowercase won’t fix this:
My recommendation would be to have a screen that asks “your family crest is a <blank>?” and asks the reader to confirm before moving on. That way, they get to see it written out the way it will be displayed later in the story, and can correct it if they accidentally started their crest name with a capital letter.
- Horion
Some Horion achievements (Your Mission Or Your Life and That Mysterious Masked Man) don’t seem to work for my partner, despite following a walkthrough they found on Steam and trying basically every iteration of options/character builds in conversations with him. They might be bugged.
Also, a suggestion. When you are an Intellect 2 character, the correct route to discuss philosophy with Horion seems a bit counter-intuitive. Saying “I’m not sure what’s nature and what’s not, and I’m not sure it matters” appears dismissive, as if the player is disinterested in a philosophical conversation with Horion. This is especially true since that choice instantly dismisses the conversation topic of philosophy in other playthroughs where the player has a less than 2 Intellect.
- Elery in Chapter 4
The game doesn’t inform you that Elery will be left behind if you choose to flee the mountain in chapter four and if the food got poisoned. It only tells the player this after they’ve already chosen to run away. While the game does allude to Elery getting sick, it never outright confirms that she is poisoned and that if you run away she and all of the poisoned people will be left behind.
The first time this happened to us, it was really upsetting. We chose to retreat, under the assumption that we could bring the sick people with us, and without being first reminded that Elery was among their number. Losing Elery unintentionally like this felt awful. We recommend that the player be given a quick screen that double-checks their intent to flee, and notifies them if any of the named NPCs in their rebellion will be left behind.
- Traditionalist noble dialogue
The original draft of XoR did not allow the player to roleplay as a traditionalist noble. After this option was added, however, there were still parts of the game where a traditionalist noble would say/do things that only a default, non-traditionalist noble would say/do. For example, during the prologue in Rim square, it says you’re fond of Joana right after you pick the option “why would I be looking for a helot?” At this point in the game, the player hasn’t even been introduced to Joanna, and they’ve just expressed a distaste for helots more generally—why would they be fond of her?
Similarly, in the scene where Simon/Suzanne first joins the Whendward band, they will refer to the player’s rebellion as a “the first helot rebellion to not be hostile to nobles,” even under circumstances where the player has been actively antagonistic toward the helotry and includes as few of them as possible in the rebellion. In one playthrough, we threatened Breden’s life during the opening, only recruited from the yeomanry, started the playthrough with the prison break opening, and kicked out Breden the moment we escaped to the woods. So as far as we know, the only helots in the rebellion are Radmar and whatever original members of the Whendward band were escaped helots, rather than yeomen-turned-bandits.
These helot-sympathetic moments feel a little out of place. They’re probably leftover dialogue from when the player was not permitted to roleplay as a traditionalist noble.
- Bethune and Breden
I know that it’s currently not stated whether Breden is the traitor, so this “bug” could be intentional if Breden is not the traitor. But we noticed a moment that seems to heavily indicate Breden is not the traitor, and we wanted to bring it to your attention.
In one playthrough, we kicked out Breden from the band during the opening, and then recruited Bethune near the end of the game. We then selected the option to fight the invading Phalangite force. During the battle, Bethune was the only raiding party leader that didn’t run into problems, and it is suggested by someone in the band that you have a spy in your midst.
If they’re correct, and there isn’t a second spy in the band, then this is very strong evidence that Breden isn’t the traitor. We wanted to make sure this wasn’t text left over from a version of the game where Breden couldn’t be kicked out of the band.
* * *
That’s all the bugs/feedback/suggestions we found. My partner and I put a lot of work in finding all of these, we hope they’re helpful!
8 Likes
Thanks, @yarnball!
@Havenstone
Let us know if you have any difficulty reproducing the bugs we described. We’re happy to help! 
2 Likes
What an absolute treasure house! Thank you SO much for taking the time to get all this down. I’ll work through it and see what I can replicate/fix.
More importantly, from the point of view of this thread’s favorite recurring discussion topic: congratulations on being (if I’m not forgetting anybody) the first players to notice and report the flanking forces evidence. 
By the time I wrote Ch 4, there had always been abundant ways to rid yourself of Breden. The Bethune Anomaly is not left over from an earlier version, nor an oversight.
14 Likes
Glad we could help!
Hahaha, that’s incredible!
@yarnball and I have debated at length about whether Breden is the traitor. In past discussions I’d previously taken the “Breden is innocent” side, while they take the “Breden is a traitor” side. Last time we talked about it, though, they convinced me to change my mind, and I thought we’d settled the debate for good.
But this changes a lot! I might have to go back to my original position now, we’ll see how our next inevitable debate pans out.
6 Likes
Sorry for reopening the domestic debate. More evidence will be forthcoming in Game 2, for anyone who’s kept Breden alive that long.
3 Likes
It will never be settled until Joel reveals it. Ugghhhhh!!!
3 Likes
I agree with you on the first, but disagree on the second. I don’t see why a Karagond-dominated hegemony couldn’t be replaced by a Shayardene-dominated hegemony.
This is why nations often leave known spies in place. Better the spy you know than the one you don’t. If you toss out the known spy, you’re providing the kryptasts motivation to send a new one.
4 Likes
We have yet to test if we can actually truly misdirect and manipulate the Hegemony by feeding Breden inaccurate info.
Breden doesn’t seem like a true kryptast to me, more like a deputised helot.
However the more damning thing about Breden for me is how much they buy into the evil religion nonsense, that is more dangerous to my mc than Breden being a known spy, which, as you say can be managed once it is known.
1 Like
As someone who recognizes religion’s utility as a powerful social glue with the potential to be one of the pillars on which a much more compassionate and just version of the hegemony can be built, I don’t have an issue with this. In fact it may provide my MC with a potential alternate route to securing Breden’s loyalty, one that doesn’t hinge on bedding her.
1 Like
Add in Ak-47’s and communism I’m good to play this game with a samurai armor
I don’t think a politically or even culturally integrated Hegemony is necessary. It may not even be optimal given my next point. I do think a mutual defense alliance between the former component nations of the hegemony will be necessary due to the number of external threats they face. The challenge without the controlling central power will be determining how to shift resources against the multitudes to threats when each individual member may not be threatened directly at the same time.
An institution like NATO would probably need to compensate for the lack of direct rule.
2 Likes
Given that China regularly calls the US a hegemon, and the US took the lead in organizing and coordinating NATO, I don’t see why Shayard, as the largest and most heavily populated of the Hegemony’s successor states, can’t take on a similar lead role with respect to collective defense. Let’s call it “hegemony lite”.
@Havenstone: BTW, is Steswick the Shayardene name for Steryc/Stezyc? Szeric? Or the region containing both?
3 Likes
You’ve got it – and it’s Stezyc. The lowland region there was in the process of being assimilated by the Shayardenes when Hera came conquering.
1 Like
The US has enough resources to be an economic autarky and provide for itself…if absolutely necessary. Shayard plainly does not, it has the most farmland and population that needs to be fed with said farmland (that is on the verge of depletion due to horrible Hegemony agriculture.
But that might just end up leaving it a mega Ukraine once the others industrialise and move onto newer and better industrial methods of agriculture, or if they simply establish more trade relationships with whatever powers there are to be found on the other continents…or alternatively if they are in a position to colonise the other continents.
It is very likely that without the resources to industrialise and innovate its way out of the problems that the legacy of the current horrible Hegemony system of agriculture has inflicted it would be indeed be more comparable to Ukraine or even some of the central Asian nations post Soviet Union than to the USA in NATO.
1 Like
Can MC romance any nobles?
1 Like
I used NATO because it’s something familiar to most of the modern audience. In reality it would probably resemble the Delian League or another city state-like system where the members are more or less equal in power.
NATO is kind of a good example in that regulation of a specific type of weapon is a key factor. For NATO it is nukes for a post-Hegemony one it would be blood magic.
Nah, nothing to apologize for. 
In my view, if Breden is indeed an officially recognized kryptast by the hegemony, here’s how they probably served that role:
Breden was at one point roped into the role of a kryptast, but one specifically tasked with rooting out rebellious helots instead of (the more typically targeted) nobles. Breden’s hegemonic masters ordered them to engage in revolutionary agitations among the helotry in order to identify potential rebels. If anyone agreed to attend Breden’s secret helot meetings, Breden could report them to the hegemonic authorities. Those authorities would then “discover” the secret meetings, harrow all the helots involved, and then set Breden back to work doing the same thing with a new group of helots. Radmar, Elery, and the rest of the gang were probably part of the most recent group to meet this fate. (It’s also possible that they’re the first group of helots Breden’s done this with, but I think that’s less likely.)
Conditional upon the above, there are three broad possibilities:
- Breden feels a sincere hatred toward the hegemony. They are disgusted by the tension between their job and their true beliefs. Every time Breden has built up a helot group, feeding them angry rhetoric and stoking thoughts of rebellion, they’re actually trying to make them into a proper threat to the hegemony. Only when it becomes apparent that this particular group won’t ever actually take any revolutionary action (or when Breden’s masters start to get suspicious) does Breden turn them in. Breden might also only turn in a fraction of the helots who attend the meetings, so that not all of them get harrowed. Breden is then relocated to a new estate, planted among the helots, and starts the process over again. In this way, Breden uses their job as a kryptast as cover for sowing dissent among the helots–after all, it’s in their job description to do so.
If (1) is true, then Breden is thrilled with the MC! Their lifelong ambitions have come true at last! Breden probably stopped feeding the hegemony information the moment that the MC started the revolt in Rim square, or is instead feeding them false information whenever they can. Breden is now well and truly on the side of the rebellion.
- Breden despises the hegemony, and is bothered by tension between their job and their true beliefs–but is too much of a coward to do anything about it. They’ve always dreamed of doing everything in (1), but could never work up the courage to try it. So they give their impassioned speeches, rile up their fellow helots for rebellion–and watch, over and over, as they’re “discovered” and Harrowed. Breden might be permitted to roleplay a rebel, but can never become one. It’s a heartbreaking job from which they can’t escape. When the MC finally started the revolt in Rim square, Breden was overjoyed. They admire/have fallen in love with the MC because you’ve accomplished something Breden has been too afraid to do themselves.
If (2) is true, then Breden is happy to be a part of the rebellion, but could still be working for the hegemony out of fear. They might be trying to limit the amount of information they leak to the hegemony, and feel exceedingly guilty about leaking anything at all. It’s also possible that, thanks to the MC’s anti-traitor precautions, Breden hasn’t had the opportunity to leak anything to the hegemony after the start of the rebellion–and is genuinely unsure whether they’d do so, given the chance. This moral choice probably keeps Breden up at night.
- Breden is a sociopath. Their anti-hegemony rhetoric, their seemingly genuine hatred of the Harrowing, their impassioned speeches, their confessed feelings for the MC–it’s all a lie. Breden has been carefully fabricating their firebrand persona for years, and knows how to act the role. They are a talented liar, using their considerable charisma to make their more emotional condemnations of the hegemony seem believable.
If (3) is true, then Breden is almost certainly a traitor. They’ve never stopped feeding the hegemony information, have no loyalty to the MC, and are making an active effort to destroy the rebellion.
In my discussions with @yarnball, my position has been that Breden is a kryptast, but not the traitor. I think option (2) is the most likely of the 3 I listed. It best explains Breden’s depressed reaction to the MC asking them “why didn’t you try to stop the Harrowing?” after the events in Rim square and Breden’s seemingly sincere admiration for the MC during the post-Winter feast/love confession. It also fits the flanking/Bethune evidence, which seems to point to someone other than Breden having fed information to the Phalangite force.
The one thing that doesn’t fit my theory is that Breden almost certainly poisoned the food during the final battle. There’s just no one else who could have done it. I think that it’s possible, however, that Breden could have been contacted in secret by their former masters right before the battle and been strong-armed into doing whatever they could to help the Phalangite force prevail, and that this is the only traitorous thing they’ve done since the rebellion started (e.g. they aren’t responsible for Hector picking up your trail). But that’s a long shot. I don’t want to add epicycles to a theory if I can avoid it.
I will also admit that I’m slightly biased–option #2 would make Breden a deep and interesting character, and I rather want them to be a deep and interesting character. He/she is too well-written to secretly have shallow motivations. I like them too much for that.
I keep Breden in my bands for (at least partly) this reason. If options (2) or (3) is true, then Breden is at the very least a predictable spy/traitor, and if (2) is true, then they’re a traitor that could have a change of heart at some point. I’d prefer them to anyone else the hegemony might send to take their place.
I, uh, also keep Breden in my bands because I like them. Simple as that. I know it’s terribly unstrategic of me, but I like running a rebellion alongside them. They’re a lot of fun to talk to, their dialogue is great, and it feels wrong to not have them along for the story after the impact they have on the MC at the start.
5 Likes
I don’t see what Shayard would even get out of that if the others are truly equal in power and status then restricting blood magic use, which for the moment Shayard would have the easiest access to due to having the largest population isn’t going to yield anything when it would be forced to trade low value crops for high priced finished industrial goods with Erezza while lacking the resources to effectively industrialise itself and no industry means insufficient air rifles which means no modern-esque army of citizen soldiers which in turn requires retention of the “warrior” caste elite, etc, etc,
So I still don’t really see any advantages to a Koinon for Shayard, the only union that may be beneficial is the one that a revolutionary Halassur would also join and even then if it is anything like the unions of old Europe that is a poverty trap waiting to happen for Shayard, unless it can pull a Germany and become an ersatz nation too.
That would be much too late for Shayard, which means in that case the only hope would be pulling a Germany and compensating for lack of prime materials with ersatz industry or becoming a mega Ukraine as in an impoverished (former) breadbasket.
Far easier to economically integrate a more centralised new state, even if federalism may be needed and replace the extractive and oppressive Karagond economic system with a more distributive and equal one. Which is also more advantageous in countering Halassur than a defensive alliance where the new Shayard only contributes a few outdated warrior elites and expendable ill-equipped peasant levies to face an increasingly industrialising world.