I have mixed feelings about this re-embark thing. (Yes, yes, I’m a difficult person to satisfy, I know.)
It’s a good thing that we can finally unlock every recipe. It’s also good that we’re no longer locked to one banner bonus. (Though with the Hearth and Shrine we’re still locked.)
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However, this potentially turns the early game into one massive grind where we burn through the progression quest twice before we finally arrive to the point where can finally begin building the city of our dreams.
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The message this carries, when Mer Burlyhand visits us a week after getting the Shrine done is a bit… weird. Like, “Hey bro! It’s an amazing city you’ve got here. Now it’s time to pick your three best guys, scrap the whole thing, and start over.”
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It also raises the concerns of lost data. Say, you’ve finally got your recipes, got your dream-team assembled, ready to build your magnificent city… Then, bam… Your Potato PC™ dies on you and you lose all your saves. Sucks to be you, I guess. Time to start over.
- Yes, yes, even before this we would have had to start over if we lost our save. BUT! Before re-embark, we could have just started building our dreams right from the very beginning. Now we have to grind through the same quest twice for maximum benefits.
Other issues:
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Sending off the three Hearthlings actually removes those three Hearthlings. This makes sense. But what’s the point? The team shows up when we next start a new game, and if we wish to continue this old game, for whatever reason, we can just load the most recent save with the three guys still with us.
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It should be noted somewhere that all hearthlings get to keep their currently equipped things. Would save a lot of headache for many of us who don’t take such things for granted. (Essentially, it’s more than 10 items we carry over.)
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When Mer first arrives, it is possible to select the banner which we carried over. It should be noted somewhere that the banner’s bonus does not stack with itself.
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The notification of the re-embark stays there in the notification panel and glares at us like an angry orange eye, telling us, “What the hell are you doing? Quit this lousy town already!” Perhaps a thing of such magnitude would deserve its own place somewhere in the GUI.
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The 7 days wait time for re-embark is a bit… unnecessary. If we wouldn’t re-embark, we wouldn’t do it 7 days later. But if we would, there’s a good chance we began the game with re-embark in mind, and the wait is just an annoying filler, sitting back, waiting in fast-forward mode.
I do know it’s possible to build a magnificent city without the banner bonuses (and even without the extra recipes.) But there’s the knowledge which keeps pushing at the back of your mind. Knowing that all this could be slightly easier if you had bonus X too and then bonus Y too…
Unlocking all bonuses must be difficult. That, I can agree with. But, the way this is headed… that I can’t get behind.
I’m not saying to scrap re-embark. No. It’s a great feature, I do love that it removes a lot of rerolls at the start of a new game, and that I get to keep my favorite guys (each of whom I will now train to max level in every class to have my perfect super-troopers.)
However, it would have been far more elegant if unlocking the bonuses (and recipes) could have been achieved without scrapping our town.
The Suggestion:
Mer Burlyhands, at the end of the Shrine-celebration, said that at some point we will be able to unlock the other two Shrines. You see, having to scrap your town isn’t exactly what that implies.
I suggest that when the re-embark thing comes up, it should offer us two paths to go along.
- Quit the town and start anew with your favorite folks.
- Keep going and have Mer Burlyhands offer us difficult quests to tackle for the bonuses
- Also keep the re-embarkment as an option to choose whenever we fancy.
Getting the other banners could be quite straight-forward: A quest to gather X, defeat X, satisfy the bunny god, etc…
As for the Hearths. Why can’t we just build all three, and then pick whichever is the active one (switching would induce a cooldown.)
The Shrines…
Of the three Shrines, only the random-buff one comes with a “real bonus,” the other two just puts two massive features (masterwork craft and legendaries) behind a choice wall.
We could come up with a billion things to address this, for one…
- We could have masterworks and legendaries a “non-choice” unlockable thing, separate from the progression quest.
- Each Shrine could have its own set of random buffs, and, like with my suggestion of Hearths, we could choose which one is active.
Well, this is all I had for now…
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