Introduction to Adventuring

The Basics

The adventuring feature is a fairly complicated gameplay feature that mimics tabletop roleplaying games! With it, you can take your cats out on grand adventures for loot, lore, and more.

Keyboard Controls

Adventuring should work via mouse/mobile touch or using key controls. I personally use exclusively key controls to get through adventuring. Key controls are the browser defaults and the relevant buttons auto-highlight as you go, making it so you don't need to go through the whole page repeatedly. You can use Enter to confirm or select an option and Tab and Shift-Tab to go forwards and backwards between the options and spaces.

Tip: If you are using Safari on an Apple device, you will need to either change your settings or use Option-Tab and Option-Shift-Tab. To swap the behavior of Tab and Option-Tab, turn on “Press Tab to highlight each item on a webpage” in the Advanced pane of Safari settings.

If you are using Firefox on an Apple device, you may need to go into your computer's System Preferences -> Keyboard and check the "All Controls" radio button.

If you are using Vivaldi, you will need to go into your browser settings and check "Focus all controls and links" under both Webpages AND Keyboard settings.

Text Typing Speed

To make the text go faster, you can hit any key on keyboard, click the screen, or (on Mobile) tap the screen. You can also disable all of the rolling and animations under your Account Settings > Gameplay Settings.

Mouse Shortcuts

You can bypass the confirmation windows when moving to a new location or choosing a monster/ally to target by clicking the target tile a second time.

For example, if you click on a tile because you want to move there, you don't need to move your mouse all the way up to the top to hit yes, you can just click the tile a second time.

Confirmation menus can also be disabled under your Account Settings > Gameplay Settings.

Location Design

Each location takes place in 4 stages with a boss at the very end. The stages get progressively more difficult as you go, so it's intended that you have to turn back and head home around 2-5 times before you're able to finally defeat the boss (and unlock the very big rewards for doing so).

Tip: The deeper you go into the woods, the scarier the monsters get and the more challenging the experience becomes. Don't be afraid to turn back and spend more time in the earlier sections before attempting to reach the end.

End of location rewards are well worth the time and practice it took to get there though - these can include extra scenes, increased cat capacities, special items, essence fragments (premium currency), new unlocked gameplay features, and more!


Types of Challenges

As not-cats go out on their adventures, they will face two different kinds of trials: Skill Challenges and Battles.

1. In Skill Challenges, the not-cats in the party have to use their acquired skills to navigate a variety of scenarios, including anything from strangers on the road and secret hidden treasures, to identifying rare plants and climbing up and over cliffs or trenches. Successfully navigating skill challenges can lead to shiny rewards... and failing them sometimes has dire consequences.

2. In Battles, hostile monsters attack the party and attempt murder. Your not-cats and the monsters will battle it out by moving and attacking on a top-down map.

The Cat's End adventuring system is based heavily on tabletop gaming - so for both of these trials, your cats will be "rolling a number of dice" to determine whether or not they succeed.


The d6 System

Adventuring is a 6-sided die system. Essentially, the higher your cat's skill, the more dice they roll, which means the greater a chance for success. The standard die has 1 critical success side, 1 standard success side, and 4 failure sides. However, there are a variety of classes and skills that can "improve" these dice, meaning you can instead use dice with three or four or more chances for success.

1. In skill challenges, generally all you need to pass the obstacle is to get a single success. For example, if your cat gets 4 dice to their search skill, if any one of those 4 dice rolls the success side, the cat has successfully found a secret treasure!

Sometimes though, skill challenges are "Difficult" skill challenges, which require a critical success to pass. There will be a note indicating this if it is the case.

2. In battle challenges, not-cats typically deal 1 point of damage (or healing) for each standard success, and 2 (or more) points for each critical success. These base amounts go up by one at levels 4, 7, and 10. But that's not all, critical success power scales with..... the power of friendship!

Harmony: The relationships between the not-cats on your team make a world of difference in battle challenges! For each close relationship (littermate, partner, best friend, etc.) on the team, critical successes are increased by an additional 2 points. For each other relationship on the team, critical successes are increased by an additional 1 point.

This is not inconsequential! Loving your battlefield crew means all the world when you need to protect each other from terrible monsters. The strongest team would be 4 littermates (or 4 cats who are all mutually partners or best friends), who would have a whopping +6 damage to each critical success. It's a good thing monsters aren't very good at making friends......

Now, there are some limits to make sure you aren't going too wild with friendship power. Harmony is capped to the cat's highest level, so a level 1 cat is only allowed up to 1 point of harmony and a level 2 cat is allowed up to 2 points of harmony, etc.

The damage dealt by critical successes (depending on harmony) is as follows:
Level 1: 2-3 damage
Level 2: 2-4 damage
Level 3: 2-5 damage
Level 4: 3-7 damage
Level 5: 3-8 damage
Level 6: 3-9 damage
Levels 7-9: 4-10 damage
Levels 10-13: 5-11 damage

Disharmony: Rivals increase the critical success by 2 points, in the same way as above, but only on withered dice (when the situation is very dire). We'll get to the withered dice thing later.

Automatic Success Chips: Some abilities are designed so that they cannot entirely miss. These abilities will include an automatic success chip, which is designated by the circular shape and is equal to one standard success.


The Dice

Standard Die: This is the standard die most not-cats will be using for most things. It has one success (the paw print) and one critical success (the super triple pawprint). The first image here is the symbol it uses (a die with one dot on it.) The last image is the automatic success chip.



Skilled Die: This is the improved die that specializing in a skill or class often allows a not-cat to use. It has two successes (the paw prints) and one critical success (the super triple pawprint). The first image here is the symbol it uses (a die with one plus symbol on it.)



Expert and Heroic Dice: If dice are further improved, they can become expert (two success and two critical success) or heroic (three success and two critical success). These are represented by two and three plus symbols.




Reduced Die: Not everything is good though, sometimes things can decrease your chances for success (like being scared). Dodge chances are by default using reduced dice (because dodging is hard). Reduced dice have only the standard success. These are represented by one minus symbol.



Withered Die: If your die type is reduced even further, it becomes withered. Withered dice have no successes and no critical successes. All they have is the dire situation's version of a critical success. By default, this is just 1 point. However, for every black heart (or rival) a cat has, that will increase by 2.

This is the one time where maybe you want your sworn enemy to help you out. Nobody is allowed to murder you!!! Who am I going to whap over the head with my paw every time I see them if you get eaten by monsters?!?

The withered die is represented by two minus symbols. Fortunately for everyone, it can't get any worse than this.



Automatic Die: This is the die type that is used when you use an item. Items can't fail, and so have one critical success and five success values. The critical success value is based on the not-cat that is using the items. It's marked with an A (for Automatic).



Precise Die: This is the improved automatic die, used by rare or special items. The precise die has two critical successes and four success values. It's marked with an A+ (for Automatic Plus).



Broken Item Die: This is the die you use when you use a special item during a skill challenge. There is a 1 in 6 chance that that item will break and be used up.




The Classes

There are 7 non-magical classes to choose from. Once magic is released, additional magic classes will be released. Each has its own special bonuses and unlockable abilities.

Fighter
A dangerous warrior who focuses on powerful melee attacks. The fighter class is all-around fairly simple, most of its unlockable skills involve doing increasing amounts of melee damage.

Bonus: Uses an improved die type on melee attacks.

Thief
A sneaky troublemaker who is very difficult to target. The thief has a mix of melee and range-based attacks that are agility-based, and can unlock a very special ability that allows them to steal items from monsters.

Bonus: Uses an improved die type on dodge rolls.

Guardian
A robust warrior with a great deal of health and protective power. The guardian's primary purpose is to absorb damage so that the others on the team don't get hurt.

Bonus: Maximum health points are increased to 150%. Uses an improved die type on health rolls in battle.

Ranger
A finessed warrior who focuses on precise range attacks. The ranger class is, much like the fighter, fairly simple and focused largely on range attacks that do increasing amounts of damage. Range is a very powerful thing to have, but rangers do eat through a lot of crossbow bolts, which can make them more of a burden on the village's resources.

Bonus: Uses an improved die type on range attacks.

Medic
A supportive healer and expert at using items. A medic has two primary purposes: to heal the others on the team, and also to use special items more effectively. Higher level medics can use poison abilities.

Bonus: Uses an improved die type on first aid/support actions and can use any item as either melee or range.

Scout
A perceptive leader who guides the team both on and off the battlefield. While the scout's primary strength is in skill challenges and not battles, a scout can be a huge advantage to have due to their tendency to allow your team to go before the monsters and move much more efficiently.

Bonus: Uses an improved die type on all non-personality skills and initiative turn order is increased by 150% for the whole team. Uses an improved die on perception rolls in battle.

Bard
A dramatic performer who supports allies... and torments enemies. The bard is a unique class that unlocks a number of abilities that allow them to attack with spite. They can scare, intimidate, and deal psychological damage to their opponents, purely based on their personalities.

Bonus: Entire team uses an improved die type on bravery, benevolence, and spite rolls.


Multi-classing: Cats can level up in each class individually, making it so they can mix and match unlockable skills from each. This opens up a huge world of creative strategy-building!

Note, you only get the level up gift backpacks and health bonus the first time you reach a level. So, if you're already level 4 in fighter, you won't get double gifts for leveling to 4 in ranger as well.

Strategy: Those die types we mentioned earlier are so important (the more harmony and success sides, the better!), so you'll want to pay attention to making sure your cats are specialized to their specific roles. Trying to use range attacks with a fighter or heal with a guardian can lead to less-than-stellar results.

For example, if my team is a Fighter, a Ranger, a Medic, and a Scout, their roles might look like this:
- Fighter and Ranger deal the damage
- Medic keeps the team members alive
- Scout makes the Fighter and Ranger stronger + handles a lot of the outside-battle skill challenges

You'll also want to be sure you're playing into your cats' strengths when choosing a class. For example: high strength makes a great fighter, high finesse makes a great ranger, and high cleverness makes a great medic.

New Players: Some classes are more 'entry level' than others, depending on the resource cost of maintaining the class. Additionally, classes are currently capped to level 4, and some of the classes get spicier at higher levels.

Some examples are below:

- Ranger and medic require a healthy stock of items to be functional. Getting yourself a supply of crossbow bolts (available through the Craftscat occupation) and bandages (crafted through the Clothier occupation) is essentially a prerequisite to these classes. These two items can also be found in the backpacks you get when leveling up cats, in supply crates, and on the open market from other players.

- Bards and Thieves, while still useful, do not unlock their core features until after the current cap of level 4 (For bards, being able to attack and deal damage with spite against bravery. For thieves, stealing items). They still have some good stuff, but they will become much more useful later on.


Skills and Skill Challenges

Skill Challenges are text-based encounters where something will happen and your cats will need to respond to it. For example, you may come across a river and have to figure out how to cross it, or you'll find a locked box and need to try to get it open.

Skill challenges can be Difficult or Standard. Standard requires just a single success from the cats involved, while Difficult requires a critical success. Difficult skill challenges are rather uncommon.

There are two kinds of skill challenges:

Choose a Cat: In these challenges, only one of your cats needs to attempt the challenge. For example, there is a hidden item at the top of a cliff. You can pick a cat to retrieve it, and also choose whether they will jump or climb up to the top.

Choose a Skill: In this type of encounter, every one of your cats will have their skill tested and you just need to pick which skill to test. For example, there is a river. You can either have all of your cats swim it or you can have all of your cats balance across a log bridge.

Whether you succeed or fail will determine what result you get. Sometimes, success will just mean you don't get hurt, but other times it will lead to rewards and treasures.

Equipment-Type Gear: Certain items can be used to make skill challenges easier! These items are labeled as "equipment" and can be crafted at various occupations. If you own the relevant piece of equipment, you can check a box to improve the die type for every cat during that challenge.

Note: Equipment can get pretty roughed up in adventuring. It has a 1 in 6 chance of breaking after each use, so you may want to have spares on hand!

The Skills

There are 21 different skills that can be used in skill challenges. Each is based on an individual one of your cat's stats, and you get to pick 4 of them to be extra good at per cat. Some of these skills are based on special personality-based stats.

Side Note: There are three adventuring-exclusive stats based on your cat's personality that can be used in skills and battles: Spite (low benevolence), Benevolence (high benevolence), and Bravery (high bravery).

Strength-based skills: Climb, Swim, Force

Agility-based skills: Run, Jump, Balance

Finesse-based skills: Sneak, Use Tool, Escape

Perception-based skills: Spot, Hide, Listen, Search, Track

Cleverness-based skills: Knowledge of Animals, Knowledge of Plants, Knowledge of Geology

Luck-based skills: Knowledge of Magic

Benevolence-based skills: Befriend

Spite-based skills: Intimidate, Bluff

Some skills are used in some areas more than others, so you'll want to strategically decide what skills to put on your cat before each adventure. These can be changed freely between adventures (not during), so it helps to learn what kinds of situations your cats are getting into in each place.

Tip: Don't be afraid to put the same skills on every cat if you know they're vital for a location.


Battle Encounters

Battles take place on a 7x7 grid map. Creatures take turns in order of highest to lowest initiative, where initiative is based on the creature's perception stat.

Individual creature turns have two parts: a movement phase and an action phase.

Movement Phase

During the movement phase, the creature can move a number of squares equal to the number of agility dice they have plus 1. (So, for example, a creature with 3 agility dice can move up to 4 squares). Movement is only horizontal or vertical, and not diagonal.

While most movement is walking, there are all kinds of interesting obstacles that might slow your not-cats down. These special obstacles will require a successful skill check in order to move the full movement to the destination. If the skill check is failed, they'll end up stopping on the first tile of that obstacle type. For this reason, cats can always move a single tile into an obstacle without having to worry about making a roll.

The kinds of special movement types are listed below:

Water (Lakes, Rivers, etc.) - Requires Swim skill
Cliffs or Ladders - Requires Climb skill
Pits or Trenches - Requires Jump skill
Rough Terrain (Log Bridges, Rocky Surfaces) - Requires Balance skill
Obscured Terrain (Tall Grasses, Heavy Brush) - Requires Hide skill
Tiles occupied by monsters - Requires Sneak skill

Special Note: Some monsters are exempt from certain obstacle types. Aquatic creatures do not have to roll to swim and flying creatures are exempt from all but hiding.

Tip: Not-cats can only make one kind of movement skill check per turn, so if getting to a space would require crossing two or more unique types of obstacle tiles, the cat will have to stop before progressing the rest of the way.

There are also some tiles that cats cannot move into at all (for example, walls and trees). These obstacles they'll have to go around.

Action Phase

After movement, you'll get to pick an action. This can be one of your four abilities, or you could use a special item (such as chamomile tea) or skip your turn. The variety of effects abilities can have vary considerably. Generally speaking, each ability is classified under the following categories:

Melee or Range - Melee abilities can only be used on horizontally or vertically adjacent creatures (not diagonally). Range abilities can only be used on non-adjacent creatures that are visible. Visibility is determined by drawing a straight line between the center of your cat and the center of your target. If the line is blocked by an obstacle or other creature (ally or enemy), the range ability won't be usable.

Support or Attack - Support abilities target allies. They often heal or apply beneficial status conditions. Attack abilities target opponents. These generally cause damage or apply harmful status conditions.

Types of Targets - As far as targets go, abilities will always fall under one of the following categories:

- Targets you (the user)
- Targets a single creature
- Targets both you (the user) and all creatures adjacent to you
- Targets all creatures adjacent to your target (for example, the monster next to you and all the monsters next to them)
- Targets all creatures of a certain type, such as all allies (no matter whether they are visible)

Now that we've covered the basics, there are a ton of special effects abilities can have in addition to this. Here are a few covered before:

- Some abilities will push the target back a few tiles.
- Some abilities will allow the user to move to anywhere on the map.
- Some abilities will add or remove special conditions. These will be covered in the next section since there are quite a lot of them.
- There is a specific high-level thief ability that allows pickpocketing of monsters, giving bonus loot (usable only once per monster).
- Some abilities grant bonus dice or improve the die type of the attack (or reduce the die type of the defender)

Once you've chosen an action and a target, the target may have to defend (either with bravery or agility or such). The difference between the point values of the attacker and defender (see the dice section above) will determine the damage dealt.

Status Effects

Many abilities will also apply a status effect to one or more creatures. These last a varying number of rounds, depending on the ability that applies them.

There are three kinds of status effects: Conditions, Stances, and Moods. Each creature can only have one of each at a time. So, if a cat with a mood effect were to get another mood effect, the new mood would overwrite the previous one. This means that, if your cat gets a bad physical status, you can sometimes overwrite it by applying a positive one over top of it.

Conditions

Defeated: When your cats reach 0 health, they become defeated and cannot participate in the adventure until you go back home to rest. Don't worry though, they'll be just fine after a nap!

Poisoned: Poisoned creatures will steadily lose more and more health on each of their turns. The shorter the "countdown timer" on the poison, the faster the poison will escalate.

Stances

Blocking: Blocking creatures use an improved die for dodge.

Hidden: Hidden creatures use a twice-improved die for dodge.

Protected: Protected creatures get +2 Dice on all dodge rolls.

Guarded: If a creature is guarded, anything that might attack them will instead have to attack the creature guarding them.

Readied: Creatures that are readied will reflect any extra defense back on the attacker as damage when attacked.

Fallen: Creatures that are fallen are unable to move.

Trapped: Trapped creatures need to use their actions to attempt to escape.

Hasted: Creatures that are hasted have double the movement speed.
(Icon for this one is coming soon)


Moods

Determined: Determined creatures will gain +1 die on all ability rolls. Formerly Called to Action

Enthusiastic: Enthusiastic creatures will gain +2 dice on all ability rolls. Formerly Rallied

Afraid: Creatures that are afraid will use a reduced die type on all ability rolls.

Shocked: Shocked creatures lose -2 dice on all ability rolls.


Battle Events

Sometimes battles have special bonus objectives that give you experience or item rewards if you complete them. Currently, there is only one kind of battle event: the supply crate.



Seasons and Weather

Weather effects have all kinds of special impacts on adventuring. These kinds of effects may alter what the ideal builds are based on the time of year. Rain and rainstorms decrease the effectiveness of range combat, while snow and snowstorms decrease the effectiveness of melee combat. Penalties are applied both to cats and to monsters, so these effects can also make certain monsters easier to combat. For specific weather effects, please see the below:

Rain: -1 Range Attack, -1 Agility Skill
Rainstorm: -2 Range Attack, -1 Agility Skill, -1 Perception Skill
Snow: -1 Melee Attack, -1 Agility Skill
Snowstorm: -2 Melee Attack, -1 Agility Skill, -1 Perception Skill
Wind: -1 Range Attack
Fog: -1 Range Attack, -2 Perception Skill
Heat: -5% HP
Cold: -10% HP

HP effects from heat and cold can be mitigated by the cat's Health Stat as follows:

3-4 Health Dice: 10% loss becomes 8% and 5% loss becomes 4%
5-6 Health Dice: 10% loss becomes 6% and 5% loss becomes 3%
7 Health Dice: 10% loss becomes 4% and 5% loss becomes 2%
8-9 Health Dice: 10% loss becomes 2% and 5% loss becomes 1%
10+ Health Dice: No loss


Snacks, Teas, and Lunch

A belly full of tasty food is an important part of an adventurer's strategy! Having plenty of snacks packed to heal between encounters and choosing what lunch to feed your cats wisely before each day's adventure will go a very long way.

Snacks: These gear items can be eaten between each encounter and are often produced by the baker occupation. You can also craft them if you need extras!

Teas (and Other Items): There are lots of special items that can be used in place of abilities. Chamomile and Wintermint teas are automatic healing (no chance of failure) and Acid is automatic damage. Extra special teas and items can also be found or crafted.

Lunch: Peruse the luncheon options carefully to try to strategize the best results for you cats! Luncheon bonuses can add up to 2 dice to various skills, extra HP, and extra Initiative speed! Luncheon is especially helpful in countering or overcoming the effects of bad weather.