Sleuth Home - Message Boards - Sleuth Talk

Aug-28-2006 17:08

Phew, it's finally up. Shadow of the Villains has launched.

First of all, we're very sorry for the extended downtime Sunday and Monday. Because our development server died yesterday (down for the count apparently), we lost more than two days worth of work. We had to feverishly redo a bunch of stuff that was already done, and the launch was delayed a bit.

Partially because of that, we also had to drop a couple of features we had been planning to include in this expansion. Not to fear though. We will be adding these in over the next couple of weeks. We'll give you a few more details on that stuff soon.

Some of the puzzles involving Shangri La and Villain hunts are quite hard, so don't be too discouraged if you have trouble with them at first. Please note: we don't want any spoiler info involving Shangri La, the Prince or Villain Hunts posted on the City Hall boards. Any such info will be deleted by the mods.

Thanks everybody, and enjoy the expansion.

Oct-21-2006 07:22

I'm curious about other people's experience.

Before I started my first Villain Hunt, which I'm currently in the middle of, I did some test AI cases in the outfit I was intending to wear for the occasion. It was an acceptable balance of +smart and +charm as I was able to solve 5 AI cases in a row wearing it.

Now that I'm on the hunt (and wearing that outfit), I'm finding that the suspects and townies are clamming way faster than before. I have also noticed the steep drop in numbers when I judge their characters. I just quit a case where all the townies would not verify any alibis. I remember a case where 4 suspects clammed on the first question and others where most of the needed townies clammed on the first question.

I do not have an objection to getting the same clue several times after the few cases I'm successful at, but to get to those successful cases has been gut wrenchingly frustrating.

Has anyone else noticed this or am I just unbelieveably unlucky?

*tips hat*
Barry

Oct-21-2006 20:14

I have also noticed something else that I have never seen mentioned on the boards. My faction standings change when I do finally solve a case but the lady with the magnifying glass never shows up.

Oct-21-2006 20:35

As far as the faction standings, the normal twists are replaced by the villain twists, but the faction affects are still applied. So check your case tab whenever you see the twist to find out if it's a faction case. Not that it would make you quit the case, especially if you were going for that elusive final clue.

Oct-21-2006 23:51

Barry, that just sounds like a crappy run of luck to me...I didn't notice any appreciable jump in the difficulty of AI cases when I was villain hunting.

Oct-22-2006 03:57

Barry, its probably just bad luck. For the last couple of days all my suspects clam very fast, the townies wont talk to me and if Im lucky and I do solve the case then my client is guilty. So Im loosing money...

But usually after this Ill get a string of cases where the PE is all at my contact right from the start. Dont know why this is but good luck and bad luck caes come in strings in this game. So just hold on.
Im trying that too :)

Oct-22-2006 06:25

Thanks, everyone, for responding.

reda: I guess overall I've been lucky because I have also experienced runs of bad luck cases but they were never more than 3 or 4 in a row and never more than 6 a day. Unfortunately, my frustration level exceeded my patience so I purposely failed my search to end my pain. I'm not sure I will attempt a hunt again because, between the repeating clues and the incessant unsolvable cases, it left a very bad taste in my mouth.

I think I'll try spelunking next.

Oct-23-2006 03:47

I know what you mean. It seems like I suffer from repeating clue fluke. I mean look at Lilrach, she did so many hunts while Im stilkl on my 4th... But Im not giving up!