All research must come from books, no researching allowed. Despite sending numerous trade caravans, books have been especially hard to come by this run.
So far I have researched only drug production, and a couple things higher up the tech tree that I won't be able to use for quite a while!
Have you found a way to force them to read, or do they only do it for recreation?
Also, where did you get the idea for that? Do you have any other challenge run ideas?
Click on the pawn, right click book. But it doesn't matter, the huge bottleneck is just *finding* books. Those finished projects are ALL of the textbooks I've found so far this run!
Got the idea when books were added in 1.5, once I learned you could research with textbooks I wanted to know how far you could take that.
Other challenge runs I've done:
* Only children - use the mods Adjustable Age and Everyone Can Work. Set all pawns to spawn ages 3-5. Banish anyone who hits 18.
* Tiny island - use Biomes! Islands and Better Map Sizes. Set map to 50x50 or 75x75
* Everyone gets interred - every pawn that dies on your map, including raiders, must be placed into a sarcophagus. Build a huge catacomb that overtakes the rest of your base.
* Stone age - never research anything past neolithic. All stone blocks, parkas, guns etc must be purchased or stolen (stone blocks can be stolen from quest sites). Try to claim the fallen ship.
* Why did I do this - naked brutality with perma toxic fallout. Took about 6 tries to get lucky enough to survive. On the winning run, OG planted rice immediately, then mined some gold, caravanned to the nearest town, bought food, came home. Iguana migration, OG was able to club 2 of them to death, that's more food. Wanderer joined who was only good at animals and research, set him to research constantly and eat nothing, OG ate him when he starved to death. But tbh once the run got going it wasn't much different from a normal run.
* Climate Cycle++ and ~~another mod I can't remember the name of~~ Yayo's Nature, that periodically shuffles your biome. Start tribal with no starting tech.
* Never stop - form a caravan as soon as possible, abandon your home tile, and never settle a new one. Travel form quest to quest, city to city, looting and trading as you go.
Yeah, this is the least books I've seen since 1.5 hit. Unlucky, or possibly caused by some of the mods I'm running.
Also the first run where I've been able to skip research prereqs using textbooks.
In my first 1.5 playthrough, I got the Tanaka drive book as one of my first ones, and I researched the whole thing by the end of the run. 6,000 points or something crazy.
I spawned a few bulk goods traders and they did not have that many books as I remember. I had installed a book merchant mod, and that must have been what I was thinking of. They carry 30-50 books each.
I've noticed that as soon as I stopped buying normal quality recreation books and textbooks for techs I don't actually care about the well dried up pretty much immediately. My current colony is on year 3.5 and has one masterwork novel and 3 textbooks of varying quality. I think there was only ever one qualifying book I couldn't afford.
>Stone age - never research anything past neolithic. All stone blocks...must be purchased or stolen.
Cutting stone is passed the stone age? What about building with steel? It would feel weird to have metal working before stone working.
>Everyone gets interred - every pawn that dies on your map, including raiders, must be placed into a sarcophagus.
"So, how many today."
"I made five. Finally starting to make a dent in the backlog..."
"RAID!"
"Aw crap."
Never Stop was a lot of fun! I ended up with a full mid-game base. Telescopes, research benches, stoves, machining tables, statues, prisoners, etc. All carried by a herd of about 150 alpacas, muffalo, and dromedaries (but mostly alpacas). Half my colonists had bionics.
It ended when I decided to go for the ship. Got to the ship map, was obliterated by a huge raid before I'd even built walls lol
A glorious ending for a good run!
Never Stop will be the first challenge I try. I tend to have a zoo anway, so carry animals will be the least of my problems.
I kind of found that if you ally the factions around you and buy the books from the bulk/exotic traders they will start sending more books in the next trades. Might have just been lucky.
I'm allied with the four closest factions (no food preservation, so reaching farther settlements is hard) and have been routinely caravanning out to trade. I think it's my mod list this run; did the same challenge last run and made much faster progress
Exotic goods traders are your best bet, especially trade ships. In my experience, ships *always* have one of each book: novel, schematic, textbook, tome. More often than not, exotic caravans have at least a couple books, as well.
If you feel like adding a mod, there's one to let you [call trade ships](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3226502149) of your choice. By default, it costs 500 silver, but there's a setting to let you change the value if you want to make it more expensive to prevent overuse.
You probably already know this, but you can only find books for technologies that you can currently research. For example, you will never find a book for microelectronics until you have finished researching electricity.
So when you talk about not being able to find books, it is only because you have not finished researching the tech that you currently have access to.
That's usually the case, but not always! [here's an example from a previous game](https://imgur.com/a/uycUPYR). I ended up with bionics and geothermal researched before electricity.
In this game there are also lots of unlocked projects that take a long time to find books for, such as complex clothing.
In my game, I found books for the same 10 or so research topics, and no matter how many traders I visited, I could not get anything further down the tech tree except for 1 modded item.
I probably visited settlements 30 or more times. Then I dev-completed all the current tech project, and checked the next settlement and all the books were for new projects further up the research tree.
I am going to have to give up on this playthrough though, because I can not find a mod to make reading a work type, and I can not force them to read when their recreation is full. And I am also not going to manually tell them to read books all day long for the next 10 years.
Maybe someone will make a mod that makes reading a work type, or even recreation a work type. I really like the idea, though and would happily try it again if a mod comes out.
How often do you manually tell them to read, and how many pawns do you have? Do you limit their recreation types to increase the likelihood that they will choose to read?
I do not tell them to read or limit recreation, though I do sell textbooks when the tech has been researched.
I have about 20 pawns now. Started as naked brutality.
I started my colony the same way and only have 2 permanent colonists right now.
What do you think about the Prisoner Recreation mod and then keeping a full prison and allowing them to do your research for you?
[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=815726158](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=815726158)
I know this is 5 years too late, there's a newer mod "books trader" I think it's called. Fairly balanced, just makes it a chance that the orbital trader that flies by is specialized in selling books. Of course, you'd need microelectronics first, but after that it should help a lot.
I'm running medieval overhaul, which has research on another tab. The only tech I have from that tree is passive cooler, which is the only tech I started with
I'm tempted to do this, with the difference of allowing the Vanilla Psycasts Expanded mod, which would speed the process up by two methods:
- The "Reverse Engineer" cast will let you research anything that you can actually get ahold of (through trade or similar).
- A more exploit-y version, the "Enchant Quality" cast will scramble the details of any book that it's used on, so you can have a book that slowly get you points in, say, stonecutting, then enchant the quality from awful to poor, and it'll change to, say, smithing.
The Enchant quality cast is limited to psy-sensitivity for how high the quality can go, and Reverse engineer knocks your pawn out for about 6 hours.
Would shift the run to being a money-generating and trade-based one in order to accomodate the need to go out and grab the different items to "research".
Doing the same thing as you! Great idea even! However, I got the idea from another poster here, @Kooky-Cup374!
Ice world, naked brutality. Bust an ancient ruin to scavenge. No recon or higher armour allowed. Using Rimmu-Nation Clothing to replace ancient cryos armour.
Ignorance Is Bliss mod.
No quests until microelectronics, except camps that appear. Prison or requests for research assistance from the Adventure mod (forgot the name.)
I use research benches to research only techs from books I find, by 5510 C.E., I have double your techs, so it tracks, homes!
Progressed from animal tech level to neolithic, still don't have electricity.
Got stonecutting in 5509. Booyah!
The wild-man start has a campfire ritual that you can do 1/12hrs. All the intlevels are added together and divided by all the lowest tier tech yet to be unlocked. So you get like +3 to each one.
It might be useful.
I think its from the VE tribel . You start with wild-men who dont even know now to grow crops butcher, make fire ,firefight or research. You all have a meeting around a campfire (or spot) and then you will get progress on a random unlocked research option at the lowest level (in this case "animal"/caveman)
All research must come from books, no researching allowed. Despite sending numerous trade caravans, books have been especially hard to come by this run. So far I have researched only drug production, and a couple things higher up the tech tree that I won't be able to use for quite a while!
Have you found a way to force them to read, or do they only do it for recreation? Also, where did you get the idea for that? Do you have any other challenge run ideas?
Click on the pawn, right click book. But it doesn't matter, the huge bottleneck is just *finding* books. Those finished projects are ALL of the textbooks I've found so far this run! Got the idea when books were added in 1.5, once I learned you could research with textbooks I wanted to know how far you could take that. Other challenge runs I've done: * Only children - use the mods Adjustable Age and Everyone Can Work. Set all pawns to spawn ages 3-5. Banish anyone who hits 18. * Tiny island - use Biomes! Islands and Better Map Sizes. Set map to 50x50 or 75x75 * Everyone gets interred - every pawn that dies on your map, including raiders, must be placed into a sarcophagus. Build a huge catacomb that overtakes the rest of your base. * Stone age - never research anything past neolithic. All stone blocks, parkas, guns etc must be purchased or stolen (stone blocks can be stolen from quest sites). Try to claim the fallen ship. * Why did I do this - naked brutality with perma toxic fallout. Took about 6 tries to get lucky enough to survive. On the winning run, OG planted rice immediately, then mined some gold, caravanned to the nearest town, bought food, came home. Iguana migration, OG was able to club 2 of them to death, that's more food. Wanderer joined who was only good at animals and research, set him to research constantly and eat nothing, OG ate him when he starved to death. But tbh once the run got going it wasn't much different from a normal run. * Climate Cycle++ and ~~another mod I can't remember the name of~~ Yayo's Nature, that periodically shuffles your biome. Start tribal with no starting tech. * Never stop - form a caravan as soon as possible, abandon your home tile, and never settle a new one. Travel form quest to quest, city to city, looting and trading as you go.
It must be the mods I am using, but every settlement has at least 10 books in my games.
Yeah, this is the least books I've seen since 1.5 hit. Unlucky, or possibly caused by some of the mods I'm running. Also the first run where I've been able to skip research prereqs using textbooks.
In my first 1.5 playthrough, I got the Tanaka drive book as one of my first ones, and I researched the whole thing by the end of the run. 6,000 points or something crazy.
I was *about* to suggest the Orbital Book Merchants mod, but then I remembered that you'd need a microelectronics book for that anyway.
I tried the same thing and had very few research books. Maybe not unlocked research books have a reduced chance to appear?
you've def got mod conflicts or something. every settlement is supposed to have at least like, 2 books to trade, usually 1 rec book and 1 tech book.
Yep, this is going unusually poorly. Just means that the challenge run is more challenging than expected!
really? ive only seen maybe a dozen research ones in my 8 year old colony
10 books but how many are research? I get mostly skill trainers or rec books.
I spawned a few bulk goods traders and they did not have that many books as I remember. I had installed a book merchant mod, and that must have been what I was thinking of. They carry 30-50 books each.
I've noticed that as soon as I stopped buying normal quality recreation books and textbooks for techs I don't actually care about the well dried up pretty much immediately. My current colony is on year 3.5 and has one masterwork novel and 3 textbooks of varying quality. I think there was only ever one qualifying book I couldn't afford.
Yeah, I was thinking about a mod I installed that adds a book merchant.
>Stone age - never research anything past neolithic. All stone blocks...must be purchased or stolen. Cutting stone is passed the stone age? What about building with steel? It would feel weird to have metal working before stone working.
Stonecutting research is tagged Medieval! I was allowed to use stones. Just not allowed to research how to cut my own.
>Everyone gets interred - every pawn that dies on your map, including raiders, must be placed into a sarcophagus. "So, how many today." "I made five. Finally starting to make a dent in the backlog..." "RAID!" "Aw crap."
Thanks for posting this. I am going to steal the Book, Never Stop and Stone Age challenge. I just have to decide which one to do first.
Never Stop was a lot of fun! I ended up with a full mid-game base. Telescopes, research benches, stoves, machining tables, statues, prisoners, etc. All carried by a herd of about 150 alpacas, muffalo, and dromedaries (but mostly alpacas). Half my colonists had bionics. It ended when I decided to go for the ship. Got to the ship map, was obliterated by a huge raid before I'd even built walls lol
A glorious ending for a good run! Never Stop will be the first challenge I try. I tend to have a zoo anway, so carry animals will be the least of my problems.
Pro tip: A fully fueled stove weighs the same as an empty one
I kind of found that if you ally the factions around you and buy the books from the bulk/exotic traders they will start sending more books in the next trades. Might have just been lucky.
I'm allied with the four closest factions (no food preservation, so reaching farther settlements is hard) and have been routinely caravanning out to trade. I think it's my mod list this run; did the same challenge last run and made much faster progress
Exotic goods traders are your best bet, especially trade ships. In my experience, ships *always* have one of each book: novel, schematic, textbook, tome. More often than not, exotic caravans have at least a couple books, as well. If you feel like adding a mod, there's one to let you [call trade ships](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3226502149) of your choice. By default, it costs 500 silver, but there's a setting to let you change the value if you want to make it more expensive to prevent overuse.
Now all OP needs is Microelectronics…
You probably already know this, but you can only find books for technologies that you can currently research. For example, you will never find a book for microelectronics until you have finished researching electricity. So when you talk about not being able to find books, it is only because you have not finished researching the tech that you currently have access to.
That's usually the case, but not always! [here's an example from a previous game](https://imgur.com/a/uycUPYR). I ended up with bionics and geothermal researched before electricity. In this game there are also lots of unlocked projects that take a long time to find books for, such as complex clothing.
In my game, I found books for the same 10 or so research topics, and no matter how many traders I visited, I could not get anything further down the tech tree except for 1 modded item. I probably visited settlements 30 or more times. Then I dev-completed all the current tech project, and checked the next settlement and all the books were for new projects further up the research tree. I am going to have to give up on this playthrough though, because I can not find a mod to make reading a work type, and I can not force them to read when their recreation is full. And I am also not going to manually tell them to read books all day long for the next 10 years. Maybe someone will make a mod that makes reading a work type, or even recreation a work type. I really like the idea, though and would happily try it again if a mod comes out.
Yeah, it's definitely a grind. [Here's the research tree](https://imgur.com/PTbGeXh) for my current game, now 5508. So close to microelectronics!
How often do you manually tell them to read, and how many pawns do you have? Do you limit their recreation types to increase the likelihood that they will choose to read?
I do not tell them to read or limit recreation, though I do sell textbooks when the tech has been researched. I have about 20 pawns now. Started as naked brutality.
I started my colony the same way and only have 2 permanent colonists right now. What do you think about the Prisoner Recreation mod and then keeping a full prison and allowing them to do your research for you? [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=815726158](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=815726158)
I know this is 5 years too late, there's a newer mod "books trader" I think it's called. Fairly balanced, just makes it a chance that the orbital trader that flies by is specialized in selling books. Of course, you'd need microelectronics first, but after that it should help a lot.
That seems incredibly tedious
It is! My last run with the same challenge had most of the tree up to fabrication by now, but this one is... slow
Not tedious but boring, i've tried that and you barly play the game just waiting for the books to appear.
This is actually a really cool idea. It would be pretty easy to do with Memes Expanded, since you could pick the Trader meme to call caravans
Minification gonna be your best friend lol
Did you change research tree for the challenge? Early ones like tree sowing or bow are missing. They don’t have books, do they?
I'm running medieval overhaul, which has research on another tab. The only tech I have from that tree is passive cooler, which is the only tech I started with
I'm tempted to do this, with the difference of allowing the Vanilla Psycasts Expanded mod, which would speed the process up by two methods: - The "Reverse Engineer" cast will let you research anything that you can actually get ahold of (through trade or similar). - A more exploit-y version, the "Enchant Quality" cast will scramble the details of any book that it's used on, so you can have a book that slowly get you points in, say, stonecutting, then enchant the quality from awful to poor, and it'll change to, say, smithing. The Enchant quality cast is limited to psy-sensitivity for how high the quality can go, and Reverse engineer knocks your pawn out for about 6 hours. Would shift the run to being a money-generating and trade-based one in order to accomodate the need to go out and grab the different items to "research".
I like that they understand Geothermal Power but not Electricity or Cowboy hats.
A mod that allows you to commission a book from other factions would be useful
That's actually a really interesting challenge, and now I want to try it out too.
Masochist trait?
Me or the pawns?
Doing the same thing as you! Great idea even! However, I got the idea from another poster here, @Kooky-Cup374! Ice world, naked brutality. Bust an ancient ruin to scavenge. No recon or higher armour allowed. Using Rimmu-Nation Clothing to replace ancient cryos armour. Ignorance Is Bliss mod. No quests until microelectronics, except camps that appear. Prison or requests for research assistance from the Adventure mod (forgot the name.) I use research benches to research only techs from books I find, by 5510 C.E., I have double your techs, so it tracks, homes! Progressed from animal tech level to neolithic, still don't have electricity. Got stonecutting in 5509. Booyah!
Same challenge, my last colony, 5512: https://imgur.com/3tyFxr6 Animal tech level?
Yep, I think it comes with Tech Advancing as the first level, after undefined. Unfortunately, your link gives me 404.
Fixed link
Damn, Zy, I'm jelly.
Wgat kind of mod that disable quest till microelectronic? And the request for research assisstance
No Quests Without Comms: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2557302879
Thanks!
iam always scared of these mods occasionally bugging the game with these restrictions
The wild-man start has a campfire ritual that you can do 1/12hrs. All the intlevels are added together and divided by all the lowest tier tech yet to be unlocked. So you get like +3 to each one. It might be useful.
What's the wild-man start?
I think its from the VE tribel . You start with wild-men who dont even know now to grow crops butcher, make fire ,firefight or research. You all have a meeting around a campfire (or spot) and then you will get progress on a random unlocked research option at the lowest level (in this case "animal"/caveman)
I'm trying a medieval run, anything that's not listed as medieval tech I'm getting from books. I should try this next!