Being an Utter Failure

Not to drone on about my obsession with conquering the gold seal in Against the Storm, but it has become a life goal for me.  Firstly, I'm shocked that I'm even playing on an upper difficulty level and it makes me feel kind of good, so I've kept hammering away.  Secondly, I've got to give the developers some kudos because it has kept me playing despite the fact that I've basically hit a wall.

Twice now I've made it to the seal--a task that requires you to attain enough seal fragments before you can attempt to close it.  This means playing through multiple settlements, so it takes a chunk of time.  The first time, I was SOOOOO close!  Closing a seal has multiple steps, first you have to actually locate it.  Each glade you open has a weird little beacon that points in the direction of the seal.  Then, it's just a matter of having your woodcutters start hacking away at the forest in that direction until you find it.  In reality, finding it is easy.  Once you've found it, then you have to go through the multi-stage process of closing it.  There are 4 different stages that revolve around accomplishing specific tasks--usually these tasks are built around trade, exploration, or reputation.  The first set is pretty easy to satisfy--generally one of the options is to find and either open or return to the citadel three abandoned caches.  Usually I will have already found them by the time I am at the seal, so it's just a matter of sending scouts to complete the task.  The round two tasks are more difficult--you have three options; build up your trade reputation with three different settlements (by selling them goods through trade routes--honestly, this one isn't too bad); gain reputation through resolve (a bit difficult, especially early on); or gain reputation through completing glade events.  The trade route one is probably the best of your three choices here.  I barely remember the round three tasks, but I know that one of them involves having a certain amount of amber and if you've chosen to trade, you should have enough amber to pick it.  The round 4 tasks are a real doozy....one involves getting the resolve of all three species in your camp to the max; one involves using a ton of rainwater and burning a bunch of blightrot cysts; and the other involves quickly completing two forbidden glade events.

That stupid gold seal is just taunting me!

Besides completing the tasks to close the seal, you also have to contend with the normal storm season, the hostility level debuffs, AND a rotating series of plagues.  These plagues throw another layer of difficulty on top of everything--some of them aren't too bad, but there are a few that suck.  My least favorite plague (I think it's "plague of darkness") extends the storm season by 100% and makes it so you can't sacrifice any fuel.  Generally, I lose a bunch of villagers and build up impatience.  Another particularly brutal one requires you to discover two dangerous or forbidden glades before the end of storm season or else three villagers will die.

I was within a hairs breadth of winning one one seal--I made it to the fourth set of tasks and I generally opt for the one that requires you to burn through 600 rainwater and burn 35 blightrot cysts.  Stupidly, I hadn't been using my rainwater and I just had too much impatience built up to survive through multiple cycles.  (*It's worth noting that the tasks to complete a seal do not change, they are the same every time, so be conscious of that)  Just last night I failed again...but in a much faster and much sadder fashion.  This time I was done in by a bad combination of storm disasters--namely one that dropped two blightrot cysts on my camp for every villager who left.  Pair this one with that stupid plague of darkness and you have a slow moving disaster on your hands.  I had built up so many blightrot cysts that my villagers just couldn't keep up, my hearth got corrupted (which made things even worse because then it kills even more villagers...and adds more blightrot cysts)...so yeah, it was basically an absolute disaster.

Am I going to stop?  Absolutely not!  I am determined to close the gold seal.  It's a bit like banging my head against a wall, but I'm enjoying the challenge.  Wish me luck.