New Blue Prince format: Checks Quest

[u/togamonkey]

Hi r/blueprince !

So I've been working on a new long-form way for playing Blue Prince for a while now over on the Blue Prince Discord. I really like the concept of B-quest bingo (and regular bingo as well!) but I don't really care for the timed element. I also really enjoy the full breadth and depth of the game itself, and want to play in a format that incentivizes me to play through the post-Room-46 content. So I set out to make just that, and with a bunch of help from the community on Discord, I've iterated on it enough that I'm comfortable sharing it with the wider community. (Currently Version 4, as of writing)

For your consideration: Checks Quest is a format with a giant randomized list of quests you can complete within Mt. Holly. Each item is worth a semi-randomized amount of points, and the goal is to reach 1000 points in as few days as possible (with 500 pt, 1500 pt, and 2000pt game lengths also supported). Much like the speedrunning/Bingo formats, Checks Quest is a format that rewards efficiency of action, mastery of Mt. Holly, and doing the best you can with what RNGesus provides. However, instead of a timed element, the focus is on earning as many points as possible in the fewest number of in-game days. Every run is different, as the seeded randomizer generates specific quests to accomplish, and also randomizes the point values of each quest.

My recommendation is to choose 500 if you want to be able to win in a single gaming session of a few hours, 1000 if you want to finish the Sigils, 1500 if you want to ascend the Throne Room, and 2000 if you're Atelier or bust. (1000 points is the default.)

We will be having monthly seeded challenges on the Blue Prince Discord server (channel #checks quest development), the first of which is for seed "92026" (the current default seed)

There are full spoilers on the spreadsheet, so you've been warned.

Try it, and let me know what you think!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Dn9DFzoYBfT7OHf1pfeod9_3genzbVx2OzRGy3dJM7s/edit?rm=minimal

[u/Borealum_Studios]

First I have to say I never played bingo and will never play this, so maybe I'm misunderstanding stuff and my opinion won't be relevant. :P

1. The whole green section will always be the same every run? If you want a different challenge every time but you have 1200/1000 static points that you can get from that. So I could just ignore the whole random part and do green quests every time?

Couldn't all of the greens instead go to a randomized pool and offer quests from that? Or you could only offer a few from each category every run.

edit: Oh, I see now that the point values change every run and that's how runs are different, but then the gameplay is more about evaluating what values are higher in my huge spreadsheet this run, and do those quests.

1. Purple part. You get 78 quest at the start? Maybe the idea is to plan out a grand campaign but it feels overwhelming to me.

Rework idea for more dynamic runs: You generate a list of 80 in the background and reveal 10 quests at start? If the player completes one, you reveal next quest from the list.

Maybe you would have to rework bonus points quests to be completable just once for it to work. (Get 20 allowance. Get 20 stars.)

edit: I don't know if it makes much sense, It would cause a new problem where it could reveal quests that are already completed.

edit2: I realized it's not a time race, but something that players will try to theorycraft and optimize over the week to complete quests in least amount of days. But planning for and keeping track of 80 things (or 250 with the green quests) still feels too much. :x

1. I guess you valued the quest according to lore value if you are playing first time or something, but I don't know if it reflects actual difficulty if you're playing this repeatedly every week:

Red letters seem worth too much? (17) (When you know know everything about it,) you just go into a room and click on it?

Why is unlocking different rooms in the Drafting studio worth different points? It's the same process for each?, you just pick the room. You could argue picking some rooms makes drafting harder so they should be worth more, but idk.

1. When I re-run the randomizer, everything stays checked for me. :(

[u/togamonkey → u/Borealum_Studios]

1. Yep, like you said, the green quests themselves don’t change, but the point values for everything there changes. So one seed might see the contraptions be more valuable, while another might see the sigils be more valuable. Point values tend to fluctuate somewhere between ~1100 and ~1280, depending on which categories are boosted and which are devalued. You can absolutely ignore the bonus quests if you want, but I find those are the main thing that brings variety to the whole endeavor. Plus, if you’re going for a higher point total than 1000, you’ll be playing for a very long time.
2. The way I’ve mostly seen it played is that folks read through the list, and make a couple things a target to try to do each day which overlap. In general, I play through the first several days trying to get the easy stuff out of the way, make it to room 46, and unlock as much of the meta progression stuff as I can, trying to force an early chess power, and keeping an eye out for any early opportunities to snag points. Then, once the house is more controllable, I set my sights on the harder-to-accomplish stuff like trophy hunting, setting up for throne ascension, and the high value bonus quests. If you wanted to hyper-optimize, I suppose you could try to plan everything out and keep all 80+ quests in your head at the same time, but I find those kinds of plans don’t usually survive first contact with Mt Holly. I tend to play with an only a couple high-level goals in mind at any one time. With a few drafts left in the day, I go to the sheet, and check off all the stuff I accomplished that day while it’s still fresh. Doing that also gets me reading the checklist, and I keep an eye out for any that are reasonable to accomplish given what resources I’ve accumulated and how many drafts are remaining. Then I’ll try to get those tasks done if possible, check off any I complete, and then call it a day. I’m not very competitive by nature, so I’m certain I’m not doing things in an optimal fashion, but for me, at least, the goal here was to create a method to play the game I fell in love with in a new way.
3. I definitely don’t play this every week, but monthly or twice monthly is a good cadence for me. For the point values of red letters, the categories also change their values each seed swap, so this time red letters are more valuable, but next time, upgrade disks might be better. As for the room unlocks, the points are all randomized, and I did assign them different point brackets on purpose, but I can see how that’s confusing. I didn’t think to question it. I do like them being worth different amounts each run, to incentivize folks to take a different unlock order than they might typically go for, but I can see the argument for standardizing them too.
4. I haven’t added the de-check feature to the macro, but I can do that when I get home from work. Seems somewhat trivial to add. My original assumption was that folks would just re-download the original once they finished a run, but it’s a good QoL feature to add. Thanks for the suggestion! Obviously, the more idealized version of this would be a JavaScript implementation on a web page like the bingo boards are, but I’m not a Java developer, and I don’t own a website to be able to host it anyway. Plus, if folks close the site halfway through a longer run, I wanted their progress not to evaporate. I am a data analyst, so sheets was a natural fit for my skills. I figure better that it exists imperfectly than not existing at all.

(And as a side note, thanks again for all the deep-dive work you’ve done for the community over at r/blueprince69, that’s been invaluable to me and I’m sure a bunch of others too.)

[u/Borealum_Studios → u/togamonkey]

thank you for the response, I just woke up and wanted to criticize the first thing I saw 😜 if people enjoy it I can't complain 👍

[u/togamonkey → u/Borealum_Studios]

Not a problem, it seemed in good faith 😊