Invite code: https://discord.gg/kPFvKu5
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Our comrades must understand that we study Wisardry not for display, nor because there is any mystery about it, but solely because it is the science which leads the revolutionary cause of the proletariat to victory.
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Just to add on to this, every XoR enthusiast should join the Discord, we have tons of spontaneous strategy and lore discussions! More recently, Ledd and I have been working on “Red Bars” (Ruthless/Skeptical/Homelander) Helot builds, weaker than their “Blue Bars” and Noble counterparts, and together confirmed that every trait and attribute combination is capable of flawlessly defeating the Archon!
Albeit 2INT/1CHA is a bit brittle and more RNG-susceptible than the others. It’s weaker than 2INT/1COM because the 1CHA does nothing for a build that already slaughters all the Theurges. Nevertheless, it goes to show that everything can be done in the game!
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How is it RNG-susceptible? When you use theurgy, it’s an I-win button.
I wouldn’t try to do a low-anarchy revolution with 0CHA, though a high-anarchy revolution, maybe.
Well, Mule RNG-susceptible. If you have bad mule (5/6 in the first raids) RNG, you’ll have less weapons and you’ll have to do an extra ration run in midwinter. The 2INT/1CHA run is brittle enough that that could be the difference between flawless victory and losing a lieutenant.
I’m not sure, I never had the worst Mule RNG when I was working on the run. But I’m extrapolating from the fact that you had to have the absolutely maximal amount of men recruited to win flawlessly (no lieutenants lost), whereas 2COM Red Bars builds can make mistakes or play suboptimally and still win flawlessly.
To clarify, rules of the build were:
High Anarchy Helot
Ruthless/Skeptical/Homelander with all bonuses
Kill the de Merres
Keep all lieutenants alive
This was the best I could do with 2INT/1CHA, on a run that was a bit unlucky with Architelone Raid timing (Week 7 means less men for you). The final battle had 602 Rebels vs. 1002 Karagonds. All lieutenants (including Bleys and Breden) are alive. You have to use blood magic to throw around enemies at the end. If you had luckier RNG than me, you can get a couple dozen more men, but you’ll still have to use blood magic to throw enemies around.
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The other benefit of having 1 charisma is that with 1 charisma and a good Breden relationship, you can get inner voice in chapter 3.
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When telling people about this book I’ve always mentioned its depth and complexity as a key feature. It’s not just well-written from a literary perspective but has an excellent code structure that lends vast nuance, replayability and a sense of uniqueness to each reader’s adventures.
What I’m getting at is, I found that Ciels can die. Only under very specific circumstances, but there’s a point in the story where that can happen. It’s not like I thought I knew everything about this book - far from it - but I certainly thought I knew that, regardless of your choices, Alira and Ciels are guaranteed to survive.
Just wanted to share the sentiment of awe and respect I have for this work.
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Yep, I just ran the run, thanks for the help! You have to start Jailbreak (so you don’t lose Elery, alas) but if you run it properly, you’ll end up with 5 lieutenants dead and the only notable rebel left will be Alira! You are able to send a couple dozen people back to the camps though.
Will be interesting to come back from Xaos to a rebellion with nobody left but a deputy lost in the woods…
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This is ridiculous and incredible. Will the rebellion be quietly doomed to failure from thereonin or is the situation salvagable? Will be very interesting to take that run forward into the sequels going forward.
On a separate topic:
We recently were educated on the discord that Shayardenes are actually fairly dark-skinned - “shade of brown” was the quote from the author - and that, for me, was quite a big deal. With that in mind, here’s something to make you smile in this quiet time between books:
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There are different definitions of “success.” It will probably be pretty difficult to come back to the point where you’ve taken over the entire Hegemony, but you can definitely live to see the fall of Aekos.
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Isn’t there a necromancer to the north? What’s his deal?
The Archlich Ghaesh and his Unquiet Dead!
As far as I’m aware this is all the info that’s publically available:
He is also referenced briefly in this post:
Specifically:
I don’t believe anything I’ve said so far about them connotes shambling, unthinking hordes, or “converting the locals into Deadheads.” The main one Archlich Ghaesh will be interested in converting is you , and in more of a Richard Dawkins way than a Richard Matheson way.
Additionally:
Exciting stuff! Very curious what choces we’ll have in our interactions with such a powerful and independent entity. Can we destroy him? Claim his power for our own? Fall under hiis sway? Even falling under his influence, would this be a “bad end” or would it continue the story on a different path in some way? A lot to look forward to there, I think.
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Also I choose things that are cosmopolitan (except the reason for rebelling) and I only get 74% meaning no recruits there can I also ask how to get more men? (money is never an issue)
Hopefully someone else can answer this better, but having 2CHA or utilising Breden regularly as a recruiter will help. @HughMyronBrough in particular may be able to give some great advice on this.
I went a little overboard - here is a guide to every Nationalist / Cosmopolitan stat gain in the book. Please forgive me. I didn’t even mean to make a Steam guide but it’s been tough to format the information in any usefully readable way. It’s certainly much easier to be Nationalist than Cosmopolitan at this stage of the story, particularly when you consider the application of fairmath; hope this helps!
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As far as getting more men goes, one thing to keep in mind is that aggressive recruiting earlier in the winter will give you more men to send on recruiting missions later, so consider using Breden for the first few weeks at least. Also, you can get a lot of men from getting all stats over 75 and completing missions in certain ways. For example, if you crush Hector’s veneurs in chapter 3, you will get extra Helot recruits, while if you instead enlist the help of the Yeomen to rob the Keriatou flocks, you will get extra Yeomen recruits, but not as many. Inner Voice and high devotion gives more recruits than either Eclect and high devotion or Kenosis and high skepticism. Also, several missions in the winter can give you extra recruits, if you choose the compassionate route, such as the Alastor mine raid, the noble estate raid, and the Architelone raid. With all that said, if you choose to fight the Archon’s army, casualties are based largely on what percentage of your troops are armed and it may be hard to arm a massive number of troops, so sometimes less is more.
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Just a quick note to say thanks everyone for not giving up on XoR 2 – progress is slow but steady, and I can’t wait to be doing this as my main job for a while from the end of this year.
Meanwhile, my sons have a new favorite video/meme, and asked me if I’d ever shared it.
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Take your time delivering us another masterpiece to this day I’m still replaying it from time to time and I’m literally counting days and months for the second sequel and the rest of series
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I knew what it was and I still clicked 
Super excited for XoR 2 though! Take your time, we’ll be waiting!
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It does say something about the longevity of the game that I could rediscover it recently after a couple years’ hiatus and still find new things to appreciate (like a fully priest-backed kenosis Lie-Breaker run). Hope you’re having fun writing all the chaos that’s up ahead.
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Hi, sorry for getting back to this a few days late. Anyways, to get more men, I could give the easy answer and say “read my guide on Steam,” but it’s better to learn the principles behind generating a large rebellion.
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Food Surplus
You want to have a good food source, the best ways to do that are either extorting Alaine (only available to some builds), or raiding Tithe Barns early and Noble Barns later. If you do the latter, then week, a few of the men raid and the rest recruit. The next week, you’ll have enough food for everybody to recruit or do other stuff! -
Opportunity Cost
Basically you need to factor in “what would my men otherwise be doing”? In the early weeks, going on extra raids has a higher opportunity cost, because if those men had instead recruited, they’d have gotten more men into your rebellion…which would have compounded on itself for seven subsequent weeks! If instead you do the de Merre Raid in week 10, then the opportunity cost of that raid is minimal, because they only would have recruited for one week, and the extra recruits you would have gotten…wouldn’t have recruited at all. Basically in the early weeks, you want to be setting up your food and ~40-45 mules, and save the raids (Architelone, de Merre, random Yeomen mule thefts) for later. -
Balance Breden and Radmar
You can afford to do a few more Breden runs than Radmar ones and still win over the band to fight at the end. I recommend you do a Radmar one in Week 10 because the cost of using a lower-strength recruiter then is fairly minimal.
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I want to add that this game actually doesn’t apply much pressure to optimize for many builds. To prove this, I did a run where I deliberately tanked rations at the start to kill off Poric and Alless and get lots of people sick and angry, then came back to flawlessly defeat the Archon’s army. My Steam guide is actually not a perfectly optimal run (to do that, you switch rations to all healthy partway thru the early weeks, but that’s a more advanced strategy than is appropriate for a newbie guide), but it doesn’t matter.
Compassionate runs are easier to play because they involve less butchery and pissing off the Karagonds (going full Ruthless on de Merre raid alone gets another 400 or so soldiers coming after you). So if someone is having trouble winning, I’d recommend they play Compassionate builds.
Ruthless builds require an experienced pilot, but also allow you to amass truly massive weapon arsenals when you slaughter the enemy army. 2INT/1CHA Ruthless/Skeptical/Homelander Helot ends up with over 1400 arms after winning flawlessly, but this is the build that requires a near perfectly optimized run.
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