Hints and tips

This guide was originally produced by Sophie Novakin, Kilrah, and Novin himself.

# Game Mechanics & Terms Overview

### Custodians

Noun. 1. a person who has custody; keeper; guardian. Here in this particular fictional afterlife rpg thing, they fight things! Used to be called “fighter” in very early alpha. This could be confused with your class since fighter is a standard rpg class. As of writing, the first section of the game still calls the job fighter so if you were confused when somebody called you a custodian out of nowhere and with no explanation, that’s why. It’ll get updated in the future, I’m sure.

### Points and Eth

Money! Currency! Eth is cheap and simply obtained by winning battles. Points are more important and are earned by completing jobs. Points are the primary currency of the afterlife. It goes towards more permanent things like body mods, furniture, clothing and weapons but may also be spent on consumables. Eth is more like a resource harvested from souls and is commonly spent on consumables, but with enough you could buy other things.

### Soul Shards

Once defeated, powerful souls may drop a crystalline shard that contains part of their soul. It can contain remnants of that person’s memory, personality, and other traits. Higher level custodians may fuse these shards into their own soul to absorb the power.

### Fusion

Higher level custodians may fuse with soul shards to absorb the power. There may be side effects such as physical transformation of their current body and perhaps an infusion of the soul’s personality into their own. This may manifest as new memories, thoughts, feelings, and sometimes weird **compulsions**. Those with the force of will can resist these side effects. Can you? You can try it out on **floor 130** of the Necropolis Bureau.

### Compulsion

A side effect of fusion. Giving in to a compulsion can bring about **new powers, transformations, and increase satisfaction** but may bring on… **mental changes**. These might be desirable or undesirable. Resisting may bring about a satisfaction penalty in the short term, but it may be in your best interest. Appeasing a compulsion may often involve spending points. In this game, compulsions have levels that you can work toward or away from. Some compulsions may interact somehow. Some may be mutually exclusive in the long term. This can be like different paths in other games. Giving in enough to get to a level that gives a power or a physical transformation, then resisting it to lower the level back down will revert mental changes but the physical traits and powers will remain. If you choose to resist it, you'll generally suffer a penalty to satisfaction until the compulsion disappears or hibernates.

### Affection

NPCs have feelings, too, ya know! Not really but certain main characters have an affection stat towards you approximating some kind of feelings. Affection is used to determine whether or not the next event in a character's line is accessible. Bear in mind it's not the only prerequisite for some characters. Generally, though, for most characters, you can access the first two events without having to gain affection.
You can gain affection with characters through choices in the main story as well as by doing events during your time off with those characters.

### Satisfaction

Satisfaction is a measure of the main character's happiness. It naturally degrades over time and can be gained and lost through events. You start off with 100 after you get settled into your new apartment. The natural degradation amount varies based on how much satisfaction you have; it's harder to maintain high satisfaction than low. At the moment it mostly gives a stat buff at high levels and a debuff at low levels. There are a few variations in dialogue based on your level of satisfaction.

### Decoration Score

Something about a big empty apartment is kind of depressing. Spending points on furniture can fix that! Each item has decoration points. Use common sense to determine relative decoration score. You start out not liking pink and girly so even if an item is nicer and more expensive, it might give less points… at first. Electronics are expensive but don’t actually have a high score to balance with opening up events that can give satisfaction directly. At certain thresholds you'll receive additional satisfaction each day to combat the natural degradation. You can see the amount you have in your quest log (admittedly, the tracking number can be a bit glitchy sometimes.

### Acceptance

This is a hidden stat. Some choices will increase or decrease it and it has an effect on how the main character views their situation. Low or high amounts change various events subtly for the moment and it will have a much greater effect on things in the future.

### Soul depletion

Since version 0.007, the soul depletion is now tracked. If you stay long enough without fusing with a new shard, your soul will eventually falter, giving you a debuff, and if you get low enough, you’ll get a game over (see week 2 for more details).