Quick tips
- Charisma does most of the talking: bluffing, charming and claiming you have no cash.
- With exactly 0 Cr on you, "I have no cash" always works on a mugger.
- Anyone can walk out of a street fight. You don't need a shield to run.
- Get knocked down and you lose all your cash and everything you're carrying.
- If a beggar asks "Pretty great game, huh?", say yes.
Conversations
Every conversation is a script of frames. A frame shows a message and up to three buttons, and some buttons lead somewhere different depending on a test. The tests run when the frame is drawn, not when you click, so Luck can drain on options you never choose. Each kind of person also has a mood from 0 to 4 that carries over between conversations.
The tests
Most are a roll of an attribute plus a bonus out of 100. If that fails, there's a second roll of Luck + 30, and every Luck roll halves your Luck. Every attribute test in the conversation scripts is Charisma: bluffing, charming, discussing, claiming no cash. None ever tests Strength, Intelligence or Dexterity. Threatening is 20 × (your weapons − their numbers) percent: a stinger counts 1, a shield or scattergun 2.
Muggers
Agree: they take all your cash and none of your items. Refuse: a 30% chance they ask "why not?", otherwise a fight. Discuss (Charisma − 20) opens three options. Threaten uses the weapons test. Claim no cash always works with exactly 0 Cr, otherwise Charisma + 40, and if it fails they just search you. Bluff is Charisma − 10. In Enlie, muggers skip the talking 90% of the time.
Pirates on comms
Comms are jammed in Enlie. Agree starts a one-minute countdown to jettison. Refuse gets an attack 70% of the time. A threat works better where you've already killed pirates, because it uses the system's cooldown. Bluff is Charisma − 10.
Bars and dealers
A bartender's information costs a bribe of wealth × (10 × (4 − mood) + 1 + random 0–63) Cr. Pay it and a black-market dealer comes to your booth later. Dealers open at 1.2–1.75 times the fair price and haggle down, but every offer costs mood, and at mood 0 they walk away. What they sell can be a fake unless your Intelligence (or Luck) sees through it; see Your Character.
The developers on the street
About one beggar in a hundred, once per game and after the early game, is one of the six developers: Wayne Holder, Bruce Webster, Donald Geddis, Mike Newton, Doug Bell or Andy Jaros. Answer "yes" to "Pretty great game, huh?" and you get 10,000 Cr. Saying nothing gets you called classless.
Street fights
The odds
Muggers come in groups of 1–5, each with 70–250 HP (more in Enlie). Your HP is health × strength ÷ 90, with a minimum of 33. Anyone at 32 HP or less is down.
Aiming
Dexterity ÷ 5 + 3 sets how exactly your shot's direction follows the mouse. Muggers aim at a random recent position of yours, so keep moving. Their shots can hit each other.
Shield
Each charge absorbs one whole hit, and a shop shield has 7. When it's empty, the next shield in your inventory takes over.
| Weapon | Multiplier | Damage per hit | Ammo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stinger | 5 | 45–60 | unlimited |
| Scattergun | 12 | 108–144 | 7 charges × 4 shots each ammo partly checked |
| A mugger's gun | 3 | 27–36 | — |
Damage per hit is multiplier × (9 + random 0–3).
Ways out
Run: walk out of the fight area. It costs nothing, and you don't need a shield. Knocked down: you lose all your cash and all four carried items. You can only die if a single hit takes you from 33–36 HP to exactly 0.
Searching bodies
You only get to search if the last mugger is shot down, and the scattergun's overkill makes that likelier. Cash found is wealth × (5–60, skewed low) × (number of muggers)². There's also a 30% chance of an item.