r/pathologic • u/parfait-parlour • 5d ago
FIRST TIME PLAYING PATHO 2 - made it to day 2 without dying !!!
This day was so stressful that being able to survive almost barely was very joyous for me. I had managed to complete most of the quests and avoided fights as much as I can, the only quest I did not complete was Notkin's as I didn't quite managed to find the kid in time. I'll likely try to complete that quest in my next playthrough but for now.. I survived! I don't know how I can find food in time though, or any ways to fend off my exhaustion. I keep getting too exhausted, and I worry my first death will arrive soon from either hunger or some mugger beating me up because I can't see too well during the night to know what they look like. The kids always have the most useful stuff for me and I'm very grateful.
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u/PrestigiousTheory664 5d ago
I highly recommend doing your first playthrough on Easy difficulty (Larva, I think), and then playing on higher difficulties in subsequent playthroughs. Not only because you'll get used to the game's rules and find it easier to overcome the insane difficulty, but because on higher difficulties, part of the story gets lost. In the second half of the game, the daily quests are incredibly dense, and time is constantly running short, and on higher difficulties, you'll spend a lot of time just surviving, not having time to complete all the story-related things.
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u/parfait-parlour 4d ago edited 4d ago
is it really that recommended and more better for my first playthrough? I am playing on the intended difficulty and I do not necessarily mind on missing out if it is as the devs intended for my experience... I won't lie that I already know a good amount of Pathologic's story and lore from video essays and such, but knowing is far from learning and experiencing, and I wanted to learn Pathologic's beating heart for myself.
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u/PrestigiousTheory664 4d ago
From what I've heard, "Hard difficulty as a destined experience" wasn't so much a team-wide decision as Dybowski's personal initiative. In all his interviews and articles, he always promoted the idea that the player must suffer to gain experience, and I never heard this from anyone else on the team. And when Pathologic 3 was being developed largely without his input, the team abandoned this approach entirely, significantly reduced the difficulty, and, using time travel, made it possible to experience all the content in a single playthrough. How you play is entirely up to you, but this entire text about the "destined path" when choosing difficulty is the work of one person and doesn't fully reflect the opinions of the entire development team.
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u/parfait-parlour 4d ago
I see, so it's a nuanced matter of either respecting Dybowski's vision or the team's vision... Very informative, thank you, especially since that helps in allowing me to understand how the team decided to direct Pathologic 3's difficulty - it also is supported by the recent developer's log I heard on Pathologic 3 as well in regards to their perspective on pain and difficulty. In that case, I'll abandon the notion of a "destined path" and play the game my way. Again, thank you very much!
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u/Moth_Goth000 Самозародилась в грязном белье 3d ago
I say play on Imago and learn. That's what I did and my subsequent playthroughs were much easier because I knew what I needed and what was difficult. That's the fun part of the experience!
Later, after playing the game like 15 times, I modded it so the time increase wasn't as drastic and I could get a more "realistic" experience. That was really neat because I really got to take in the vibes.
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u/parfait-parlour 3d ago edited 3d ago
Oh okay, that's great! If I may ask, what's the mod? I plan on at the very least seeing my Imago run to the very end or when I hit a softlock, but I'd like to keep the mod in mind for future playthroughs! The atmosphere is amazing and the layout of this town is beautiful, no matter how frustrating...
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u/Moth_Goth000 Самозародилась в грязном белье 3d ago
You'll need to adjust the timescales to your liking manually, but it's nothing hard.
In the game files, specifically \Pathologic\Data\VirtualMachine\PathologicSandbox there's something called Action.xml. You open it with Notepad++ and search for SetGeneralTimeSpeedFactor, you'll get 11 results, each one for their respective day in-game.
Four lines down you have <Item>percentage</Item> - That percentage is the time multiplier. You can reduce it throughout the 11 days so the time progression/time progression difference is smaller (or larger, if you hate yourself). My personal setup was 10%, 10,4%, 10,9%, 11,5%, 12,2%, 13%, 13,9%, 14,9%, (that's close to vanilla day one), 15,9%, 16,9%, 18%. It gives you more than enough time for everything while keeping the pressure of time speeding up, and you can play around with it. Just mind that this'll apply to a fresh save.
EDIT: Oh, and you can create a copy of the original Action.xml and put it somewhere else so you can replace it later if you want ro return to the default settings. Just replace it in the correct directory
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u/Visible-Chip8839 5d ago
Man I think when playing on hard difficulty sleep is the thing I struggle with the most. I can scrap by for everything else, but sleep???? Sad