Work Text:
Maturity Quest FAQ
spacetimeCounselor
Thanks to GGTG/grindinglyGodliest/whatever you're going by these days for giving me the opportunity to broaden people's knowledge and stuff! Anybody who's reading this without having read his Sburb Glitch FAQ, get on over there and check it out if you want to live! Seriously, this game will probably kill you otherwise.
A note to my past self: I know this hits your timestamp early- I'd advise you not to read this until you've gone and written it later on. You don't want to give up your -literal- intellectual property to Sburb's predestination mechanism! You'll have to go and figure this shit out yourself.
Lastly, thanks to percipientMatriarch, vacuumtubeVisage, enhancementEnthusiast, and the rest of my sessionmates for providing data and assisting with research. Additional thanks to bayesianMechanist, stanzicApparati, tenaciousTheseus, and the admins of Sburb.org for supplementary data and helping me to get the word out. You guys rule!
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@***Introduction to Maturity***@
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Hey, kid. You're playing Sburb, am I right? You've been dumped into a magical world full of dangerous creatures and exciting adventures, and you've been tasked with a boatload of super complicated quests and weird puzzle shit to get done. Shit is mad unfamiliar, and you're struggling to make sense of this new environment while simultaneously accomplishing a bunch of heroic objectives. It's pretty overwhelming, y'know? Figuring out how to get by in the face of all these new challenges is gonna be pretty taxing, emotionally speaking.
Now, there's a lot of people out there- some of you might just be perfectly well-adjusted individuals. Perhaps you've got your shit together, and you're not going to flip your lid just because Earth (or other home planet, turns out aliens are a thing) and everyone in it has been destroyed and you've been given the responsibility of making a new universe to replace it. That's what you're doing here, in case you haven't figured it out by now. But really, I'm not messing around. There's people who're gonna be pretty chill, more or less able to cope with all of it.
Sburb doesn't think so. It's going to push your limits, and if it can't find your limits then god dammit it's going to make some. Like, your Denizen? Your jimmies, as it happens, are not eternal, and your triumvirate is going to have the SHIT rustled out of it. Sburb, through its impenetrable mechanism of temporal inevitability and the rewriting of cause and effect, will ensure that your emotional state gets wrecked in one way or another. It's going to happen, this is science fact.
So, there's something of an air of futility to the game's "Maturity Quests". If you're going to have a total mental breakdown anydangway, why bother with all this character-building nonsense? Why are they even there in the first place?
Well, firstly- I don't like to tell people to abandon a train of thought, but listen. Maturity quests help. If you don't do them, the game will come up with something to punish you, and your failing to master tactfulness or whatever is going to bite you in the ass. It's not a matter of probabilities- it WILL happen. And honestly, a lot of new players need to get a little sense smacked into them and game maturity is occasionally an actual help. Also, hey, you have to do them or else you can't learn the song to wake your Denizen, WHOOOOOOPS
DISCLAIMER: This is a Maturity Quest FAQ, not a Maturity FAQ. I'm not going to give you tips on your personal development, because I'm not in the business of writing shitty self-help books. Personally, I don't trust the game's idea of "maturity"- it's mostly focused on acceptance, on molding you into the kind of player that follows the rules and doesn't cause trouble. The fact that it doesn't stick, that it can evaporate as soon as the game is over... it's all part of a really rather scary perspective on behavior. Like, Psy-buffs? What the fuck are those? The very idea that you can describe something as a "psychological buff" is already uncomfortably Orwellian, to say nothing of Corruption or "the Heart thing".
Nevertheless, these are things you have to go through if you want to finish the game. Why these are necessary, how they help, what you'll need to do to complete them- that's the subject of this FAQ. There are rules, there are exploits, and you can take control of the ersatz personal development the game requires of you. Let's dive in, shall we?
Note: People are telling me that this isn't a FAQ because I'm not answering any frequently asked questions. Those people can go pop a wheelie into a fire, I'm calling it a FAQ because it's not a guide because as mentioned I don't care about people's sad little personal lives; also people don't frequently ask me questions about stuff. Friggin' pedants.
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@***The Sarabande***@
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You might be wondering why it's strictly necessary to complete these quests- and if you're the type to sequence break, you can technically get by without them but WOW is that a bad idea. Maturity quests are, as you might know, part of learning the song of your land, which is necessary to wake your Denizen and get started with the whole Terraforming thing. And, because Sburb isn't especially creative, you learn parts of this song magically every time you complete one.
Yeah.
It's not all that simple, though, and the process is part of why you can't just try to find the song online or whatever. The parts of the song aren't predetermined- the composition of your song changes based on your choices, known as Heartjams (or sometimes Psyches). When you make a choice during a Maturity quest the game recognizes as "meaningful" (what that means depends on the quest in question), you'll learn a Heartjam automatically. This is like, a little piece of a song. Usually this will take the form of a complete sequence of notes, composing something like a verse of the song. There are some situations where a particular Heartjam works in a different way with regards to the full song, like maybe it's a bass loop or a beat or something. Players of Rhyme and Flow are especially liable to have weird Heartjam composition and music... stuff. I'm no music-know-about guy, but depending on a number of factors you might be called upon to do more than just play all the parts in sequence.
You'll also find your Heartjams becoming important to loads of other stuff on your Land. Like, you know those Ceremonies the Land always wants you to perform? Playing Heartjams is frequently an unlock condition for dungeons, secret temple ruins, decrepit catacombs, etc. It's kind of like the player command system, only the game will call on you to do it whenever it feels like it. Only it gets a little mixed up but more on that later.
The Sarabande is... well, it's basically just the song of your land in an unfinished state. It's a term used to refer to the collection of Heartjams you've learned over the course of your maturity quests, and consorts kind of use it and the Song proper interchangeably. Your Sarabande will generally be completely unique to you, composed of loads of Heartjam fragments that reflect your growth as a person. Which is weird, because a sarabande is supposed to be a very specific kind of triple dance meter or whatever, not some magic maturity medley.
Before you can play your Sarabande to wake the Denizen, you'll need to complete a certain number of maturity quests. There's a number of ways to determine how close you are to completion.
1. The player command [Heartjelly] can be used to review the Heartjams you've acquired, and the pendant conveniently glows brighter when your Sarabande is more complete. Problem is, the command itself has to be unlocked with its own maturity quest, and it's possible to miss out on it if you make the wrong decision.
2. You can practice performing your Song/Sarabande at the Concert Halls on Derse and Prospit. Carapaces will give you feedback on your music and how close it feels to being "done". There's a carapace at each of these halls that will try to psychoanalyze you based on your music- which happens to be a stunningly helpful picture of what sort of quests you need to be looking for. Look for Peter Oscillo on Prospit and Walter Statley on Derse- the latter's kind of an asshole about it, though.
You'll need to become a patron of the Concert Hall to practice your music there. There's a number of ways to do this:
-Complete Mail Quest 18: Ship this sheet music!
-Get a letter of recommendation from an Agent of the kingdom or another patron- you'll need to really impress them with your music, though.
-Have super high carapace reputation and just ask
-Complete Earning Your Wings (not sure if this is a specific thing or a byproduct of the huge rep boost you get from all those dancing quests)
-Give the proprietor "an unreasonable amount of money". This will always be a couple orders of magnitude more than what you have at the time, so it's best to ask early when earning a whole Boonbuck is considered an achievement. Then you can pay him off later on for a pittance.
-Visit with another dreamer who's achieved patron status
The concert hall is useful for other things- Rhyme and Flow players can grind their Verballistamina, music-triggered player abilities can be practiced, and you can choreograph dual Fraymotifs with another dreamer. Considering how much musical BS there is in Sburb, it's worth becoming a patron as soon as possible.
3. Playing the Song/Sarabande to a... uh, whatever those big Crystalantheblahs that heal you are called, will restore a little bit of health. [Song of Life] will always heal more, but you can measure completion by comparative health gained in case you don't want to bother becoming a concert hall patron and/or you've missed out on [Heartjelly].
Once you're reasonably certain your Sarabande is complete, you'll know you've completed enough maturity quests. There's always more you can do, if you're feeling unstable and also feel like surrendering your mind to the man, but at this point the song is done and you can go perform it up on the Promontory- more on that later. Completing further quests will continue to give you Heartjams, but they're not too useful beyond making the Song sound prettier. You ready to move on?
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@***Darkened Streets***@
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So, we know what you're getting out of these quests, now- aside from "maturity" which I'm still a little suspicious of. But how do you go about getting these?
Short answer: there's no real answer. Maturity quests can be more or less sought out- consorts hand out quests like there's no tomorrow, and the only real trick is figuring out which quests are the real deal and which are just like, finding their lost hat or some shit. Bearded or "elder" consorts tend to hand out maturity quests reliably (you know you're gonna hit maturity events when they refer to a quest as a [Trial] or [Deed]), but they can come from pretty much anywhere. Heartjam choices sometimes pop up when you're just doing whatever the fuck- you'll be on some quest and then suddenly you'll be presented with some big moral dilemma and then you get a Heartjam for your trouble. Ultimately, though, Maturity Quests are this whole big thing that got waaaaay too much attention during development- it'd be basically impossible to catalogue all the ways the game can drop them on you, since they're uniquely generated for each player.
Some titles are better at sniffing these out- tactician classes have good intuition on the matter and inheritor classes just can't stop tripping over the damn things. Mind, Heart and Fate also get that little intuition bonus.
For everyone else, you'll need to know about your Darkened Streets.
A Darkened Street is something like a character flaw. The point of maturity quests is to overcome these, by having them tested and sort of symbolically resolved-but-not-really. Sometimes it'll be a genuine test of character, but other times you'll just be directed to some mystical mumbo-jumbo and you'll do something with no clear meaning and then it'll be like "CONGRATULATIONS! YOU WON!" and you will suddenly feel more mature about that particular thing. It's kind of unnerving the first time it happens, and it never stops being a little too invasive and a little too convenient.
Each Darkened Street has a handful of associated Heartjams, which kind of thematically represent coping mechanisms or changes of heart. Like, let's use my first Street as an example: I got sent to this mystical zone that had this really loud annoying ringing noise that increased in pitch and volume the longer I stayed there. I was supposed to be "meditating", but I ended up getting irate and ollying outy of there. Then I got a Heartjam called [Forward Movement], and felt... less stressed out. I went back to the bearded consort that gave me the quest, and he said that I had overcome the Street of Anxiety. I had three options- [Forward Movement], which represented indomitability and... moving forward. The options I didn't pick, according to him, were [Sweet Dreams, Timaeus] and [My Serenity]. [Sweet Dreams, Timaeus] corresponded to the choice of plugging my ears, humming something else, or pretending the noise wasn't there- it represents self-delusion, optimism, hoping for better. [My Serenity] was the choice to accept the noise and be unbothered by it- representing, as you might guess, serenity- being all zen and unflappable and shit. There's always a bunch of options- usually more than three. Some options are only "available" for certain classes/aspects, and sometimes a quest will stretch over multiple choices, and... it's probably more trouble than it's worth to catalogue these.
Darkened Streets occasionally aren't "flaws to overcome"- frequently you'll be playing a class/aspect that needs to embrace or master that Street- such as Greed for displacement classes or Deceit for Sand players. Picking options that conflict with your class or aspect will frequently cause you to FAIL the quest, forcing you to find a new quest for the same Street. Consistently picking the wrong option can sometimes result in earning the special Heartjam [The Price of Oblivion]. It'll almost always sound discordant in your Sarabande and result in a penalty to your Roleplay Coefficient, but if you're the stubborn type or don't want to play along with it all, you can get away with it.
Fun fact about Heartjams- a bunch of them have overlap with music-triggered player abilities, Player Commands, and Fraymotifs. Learning these heartjams can grant or boost these powers, but it's kind of minor- like turning in a card with a country you own in Risk, and getting an extra two armies there even though nobody cares about the garrison in Madagascar or whatever. [Sweet Dreams, Timaeus], for example, is also a Player Command that buffs the sleep ratio of other players nearby- basically a lullaby kind of thing. Careful not to get your Player Commands mixed up with the Heartjams required for special Ceremonies, though.
So, without further ado, I'm gonna list as many of the known Darkened Streets and their associated Heartjams as I can. Get ready for infoboxes aplenty!
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@ Darkened Street Name @
@ @
@ Description and notes: I'll put stuff here to describe the @
@ Street and any minor quirks. @
@ @
@ [Heartjam] - description @
@ [Heartjam] - description, continued/more detailed descrip- @
@ tion of the choice @
@ [Heartjam] - description @
@ @
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...wow, ASCII is harder than it looks. Maybe I shouldn't bother with all the @ signs. Probably mess up non-fixed width stuff anyway.
Few more disclaimers: due to the nature of Sburb's personal growth focus thing, there are exceptions to almost every rule here. Think of these descriptions and associations as more of a pattern Sburb tends to follow, descriptions of what to expect rather than what's going to be there. The designers of Sburb seem to have put more effort into creating unique scenarios for these Maturity Quests than is really reasonable, so your personal journey is probably going to be a lot more complicated than tracking down X number of Streets and then playing the song.
What a mess.
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@***Streets and their Jams***@
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Anger
Anger, along with a few other Streets, suffers from a minor identification bug. Both Anger and Hatred, which are separate streets, are occasionally referred to by the game as "wrath". If a quest has been tagged with Wrath, pay careful attention to context to differentiate the two. Anyhow, Anger can mean violence, discontentment, blah blah come on everyone knows what Anger is. If you're not sure if it's Anger or Hatred, hatred tends to deal more with personal grudges.
[My Serenity] - You might notice the Zen approach shows up for almost every Street in the game.
[Catharsystem] - Taking out your anger on a target. Tends to be a disabled option unless you're playing a more destructive class/aspect.
[Fermentation] - Another all-purpose Heartjam, in which you hold back and internalize your struggle with the Street. I wouldn't recommend it just from a mental health standpoint.
[Chill Pill] - Easily mixed up with [My Serenity]. A more intentional sort of letting go of your anger, if that makes any sense. (Hint: it doesn't.)
[The Other Red Cheek] - Ordinarily reserved for Hatred (see why these two get confusing), represents becoming unconcerned with the source of your anger. Again, basically the same thing as [My Serenity] and [Chill Pill].
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Anxiety
Also suffers from an ID bug (as Stress) but thankfully Stress doesn't apply to anything else so it's p. much the same thing. Anxiety is being all worried and stressed out and overly concerned with things all the time.
[My Serenity]
[Put Your Mind at Ease] - Represents seeking out reassurance and discovering that things aren't as bad as they seem. Huge roleplay bonus to Life players and Tactician classes, but sometimes doesn't work because things actually ARE as bad as they seem. And frequently (because you ARE playing Sburb) worse.
[Extra, Extra] - Basically the same as PYME, but instead of seeking out info it's just... coming to a realization basically at random. And without the bonuses to Life and Tacticians. Laaaaaaame!
[Sweet Dreams, Timaeus] - Ignoring reality and pretending that things are better than they seem. Stalwart optimism, with a bonus to Light players and also Rain, but Rain... see section c.b on [Null Sequitur]. Jeeeeez.
[Forward Movement] - Coming to terms with the reality of your X (in this case, worry), and moving forward to solve it and put things right.
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Apathy
The opposite of Anxiety, Apathy is when you flat out don't give enough of a shit. Rhyme players tend to have a lot of trouble with this.
[Extra, Extra] - Similar to Anxiety's version, only it's realizing HOLY SHIT, there's problems you need to solve. Extra Extra is kind of a bullshit auto-win option for maturity quests and I don't really know why it's there.
[Friendship is Paramount] - Focusing on the value of your coplayers, and resolving to help them. The Choice for this option is almost always a really dumb metaphor.
[Hate You] - See section c.b for the deal with this, but for some reason the bullshit self-loathing option shows up more here?
[Upward Gaze] - Finding a goal worth working for. "Beating the game" usually works unless you're especially apathetic or under Phrenic Fever.
[Get Up] - Also used for Sloth, and happens to boost the Flow player ability of the same name. Represents expanding your view of the world, or some crap like that. Similar to Forward Movement.
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Crudity
ID bug: Obscenity. Apparently Sburb gives a shit if you're fucking tossing around god damn swear words like a bitchtits motherfucker. Only, no it doesn't, and nobody knows why this type of maturity quest is even here. You usually only have to do it once, though, and you can ignore it after that.
[Friendship is Paramount] - Doesn't work if your friends don't give a shit (they shouldn't).
[Softly] - Realizing that you don't want to aggravate people with cuss words and dick jokes and shit. Not that anybody gives a shit unless you're doing like etiquette quests on your Dream Moon.
Those are the only two options and they're almost the same thing and nobody cares so ignore these dumb quests.
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Deceit
Lying about things. Have trouble telling the truth? If you're a Sand player, good job! If you're not, then hey how about try not to be a dick. Communication is like the single most important thing in this game, next to "don't try to fight your denizen you stupid fuckass".
[I Love Rogue] - Mostly just there for Sand players, who are required to embrace this kind of thing. Witches/mages can take advantage of it, too. For some reason, [The Price of Oblivion] is renamed [Blazing Pants] for this Street.
[Friendship is Paramount]
[Thou Shalt Not] - a.k.a. "The Duty of Every Starfleet Officer". Treating the pursuit of truth as a moral absolute, and denying falsehood altogether.
[KISS] - Nothing to do with kissing. Keep It Simple, Stupid, so that you don't end up with a tangled web of lies that helps nobody. Small bonus for Explorators and an easy Heartjam for anyone else. Also? The Heartjam fragment is inevitably COMPLETELY KICKASS in your Sarabande.
[King Know-it-all] - Taking pride in your exceptional knowledge of the truth, and feeling shame in concealing knowledge. Tactician roleplay bonus.
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Despair
ID bug: Sorrow. This is a big one for most players, and the one most commonly repeated. There's a high tolerance for "error", meaning you might end up doing these quests upwards of twenty times if you can't get over the terminal sads. And of course, you need your despair to open the Clockwork Contrivances. What a wash. Anyway, sadness encompasses all kinds of feeling blue, but mainly because your planet and everyone on it is dead. This tends to be a sticking point for players, and despite the high error tolerance it's the Street that most frequently ends up in a [The Price of Oblivion] Heartjam. There's a pretty huge number of choices available during these quests, though- they almost inevitably take place when you're actually just plain moping about something. Expect to run into this at the end of a dungeon, when you recover a memento of home and get bombarded by memories of the world you left behind.
Seriously. Sburb is an asshole.
[My Serenity]
[L'etat de l'ambivalence] - Pretty much just [My Serenity], only it's more "not caring" oriented than empty-headed zen or whatever. Allegedly. I've never earned [My Serenity] so who cares.
[Forward Movement]
[Catharsystem]
[Have a Good Cry] - This one's self-explanatory. Problem is, it generally doesn't actually help because it's not just your dog that died it was pretty much your entire universe so if you manage to get this Heartjam for real then good job being a heartless monster you huge crybaby. (...yeah, I'm just being bitter.)
[Friendship is Paramount]
[Upward Gaze]
[Put Your Mind at Ease] - Just in case your home planet miraculously survived. Pffffffffffffffffffffff
[Fermentation]
[At this point it would really be easier to just list the heartjams you can't use for this] - Like seriously, if you want a boost to one of those same-name player skills, pick it up here. There's no shortage of ways to fail to stop being sad.
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Envy
ID bug: Jealousy. It's practically the same thing as Longing, but it doesn't get mixed up in the Longing/Lust/Obsession ID bug crazy triangle somehow so that's nice. More focused on envying particular possessions of other people, and as you might expect Displacement classes get to embrace this with [I Love Rogue].
[I Love Rogue] - While you can potentially use this to auto-win, in practice Thieves and Rogues will usually have to actually pilfer an object of their envy. If this object is a person (in a relationship with another player), this can lead to infighting and all sorts of problems. Displacement classes, just go Fermentation or The Price of Oblivion if that happens, it's not worth turning your session into a fucking soap opera.
[Fermentation]
[Friendship is Paramount]
[Eyes on the Prize] - Not really solving the problem of envy at all is the option that corresponds to envying some other thing a whole lot more than the original object of desire. If you want to complete the quest AND miss the point entirely, here you go.
[Vertical Motion] - Kind of the same as Upward Gaze, but more... active? Listen there's just a lot of vague duplicate Heartjams alright.
[Frustracean] - Kind of like PYME, where you discover that what you wanted wasn't all that great after all. Sour grapes and all that. Medium roleplay bonus for Hope.
[My Serenity]
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Fear
Pretty straightforward. The designers may have missed the point, though- [Fermentation] is IMO the real man's response to fear- doing the right thing even though you're peeing your pants in terror. It almost never comes up as its own choice, though. Fear has a wicked nasty bug with the Psychoruins, though- see the Glitches and Exploits section to learn how to avoid becoming a soulless fear husk.
[My Serenity]
[Friendship is Paramount]
[Sweet Dreams, Timaeus]
[Afraid of the Darko] - Exercising caution and keeping your fears at arm's length.
[A Taste For Adventure] - Getting a thrill out of fear and embracing it as an ally. Small roleplay bonus for active classes and Blood players.
[Harleboss] - Becoming so god damn powerful that nothing can pose a threat to you. Note that this is more of an intent kind of thing, you don't actually have to become a super invincible god for this (although I've heard of players scoring this heartjam by tiering).
[Phobian Extermination] - Facing a particular fear and getting the fuck over it already. Note: If you're playing something like Fate, Life, or Doom, you might get faced with an option where your phobia is the perfectly natural fear of death, and you'll be presented with the option to kill yourself. DO NOT DO THIS. What are you, an idiot or something?
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Greed
ID bug: Avarice. Displacement classes get to autowin with [I Love Rogue] as usual. Actually how about I stop mentioning it individually and just list it in the misc section with all the Streets you can skip with it. Damn that thing is useful. Note: This can also apply to being power-hungry, and these quests are perfect for treating a player in the early stages of MeGaLoVania, along with Vainglory and Pride quests. Oh and yeah it's really similar to envy/jealousy/longing/lust/obsession, what else is new.
[My Serenity]
[Frustracean]
[Eyes on the Prize]
[Table of Contentment] - Learning to be satisfied with what you have. Always rubbed me the wrong way.
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Hatred
ID bug as Wrath, as previously mentioned. This is when you're carrying a grudge against another player, or potentially some game abstraction or whatever.
[Catharsystem] - If this is a Player grudge, for the love of god skip this option. Infighting is bad, friendship is paramount.
[Friendship is Paramount] - wheeeeee
[My Serenity]
[Chill Pill]
[Fermentation]
[The Other Red Cheek]
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Impatience
Now, this might be just me, but i think this one is just crazypants. Like, you're already having to kill a bunch of monsters and save your Land and try not to die and deal with all your other players, and the game gets up in your grill if you're not stopping to smell the goddamn roses? The game's gonna penalize you for getting a little restless? Oh no wait Restlessness is its own damn Street. Someone shoot me already.
[My Serenity] - Okay really should I stop listing this? Yeah I should. I'll put it under misc stuff and not go back and cut the other mentions out because pffff what is editing.
[Put Your Mind at Ease]
[Time on my Side] - Okay, this one is really only for Time players or people who've gotten mixed up in loops. If you're all worried about some problem you need to solve, you get to delegate to your future self. With time travel, apparently procrastination is a viable strategy.
[Statement of Intent] - The non-time version, kinda. You've got to have exceptional strength of will to earn this one- procrastinate better, hot damn!
[Downtime] - Either really easy or really hard to get, because it's just really nonspecific. Like, you gotta plain relax, but not for any particular reason? I don't get it. There's always Heartjams like this that "solve the problem" in the most generic way possible.
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Longing/Obsession/Lust
Uuuugh this is kinda dumb. The whole street is about letting go of desire, which I mean come on you have a completely OPPOSITE street called Apathy already, and two streets (greed/avarice and envy/jealousy) which are basically the same. And while Longing and Obsession are supposed to be functionally different (one being wrt something you don't have and the other being something you do) they have all the same Heartjams and their quest generation overlaps and they both get called Lust interchangeably, and greed and envy heartjams tend to work even though they're not like official quest options and aaaaaaaa
i'm going to stop complaining about how the game's street and heartjam definitions are vague and terrible and just, like, get the fuck on with it. like, just resign yourself to the fact that it's usually impossible to tell what action will correspond to what Heartjam and just try to roleplay right.
[Table of Contentment]
[I Love Rogue] - Mentioned again because it's a little different for Longing and Obsession. Longing will have you steal the thing in question, while Obsession just kinda gets skipped.
[Forward Movement] - Forcing yourself to leave your desire behind. Usually really easy to achieve- getting the fuck out of wherever the quest is taking place will score you this- sometimes even if that means going backwards. Roleplay bonus to either Stars or Hope, depending on if it's Longing or Obsession. If you got Lust, the bonus applies to both aspects even though that DOESN'T MAKE SENSE
[a whole bunch of greed or envy overlap heartjams]
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Paranoia
Paranoia's kind of useful in Sburb, because unlike back home where there's no monster under the bed, everything IS, in fact, trying to kill you. I would personally recommend every player of this game deliberately ramp up their paranoia levels (unless you're playing Fate in which case jesus just trust your aspect) to survive. But here we are with a street that actively hurts your chances of survival. Way to go!
[Heartjelly] - Here's what I advise everyone grab. It's a pretty dependable heartjam- it's basically [Sweet Dreams, Timaeus] wherein you try to fool yourself that everything's fine. Only, Sweet Dreams is also a heartjam for this street so be careful. Close your eyes and concentrate really hard on how everything's going to be all right- Sweet Dreams is more passive. The important part here is that this is the only place to learn the [Heartjelly] player command, used to check on Sarabande completion. Unless it'd be a huge hit to your roleplay coeffecient, I highly advise everyone to pick this up.
[Sweet Dreams, Timaeus]
[Put Your Mind at Ease]
[Extra, Extra]
[Harleboss]
[Afraid of the Darko] - If you don't want to pick up Heartjelly, here's the option for embracing fear as an ally and stuff.
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Pride
Oh jeez, this one. Kinda similar to vainglory, but watchoo gonna do. Pride is pretty straightforward, and people who're truly humble will have an easy time with these. The problem (if it can be called that) is that Pride quests can have a damaging effect on both self esteem and drive- whatever the game does to mess with your head is going to make you "more goal-oriented" and inclined to help the team and move the game forward. I recommend avoiding these when possible if you're trying to do otherwise- any kind of game research, sequence breaking, level grinding or other "deviant behavior", because the game will literally install mental blocks that inhibit your willingness to do this stuff. Why it doesn't pull out all the Orwellian stops except for these quests is anyone's guess.
[Friendship is Paramount] - Quest options are surprisingly regular for Pride, if you've got a buddy- you'll typically be presented with some obvious challenge to your worth, and you'll need to ask your friend for help.
[Hate You] - Self-loathing maturity skip works pretty well here.
[Exhaustivity] - Corresponds to giving up on an obstacle after giving it everything you have.
[Lilliputianary Reaction] - Recognizing that you're not capable of doing everything yourself.
[Harleboss] - Generally only appears for Dreams players, but... sometimes the game just recognizes that you really are that awesome, and lets you through.
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Restlessness
A vaguer sort of Impatience, less focused on a particular thing so much as not wanting to wait or for things to stagnate. Usually the first maturity quests passive-spectrum classes will encounter, if they're too unruly for their role. Similar to Impatience (as you might have guessed) minus [Statement of Intent] and any particularly active Heartjams.
[Downtime]
[Time on my Side]
[Put Your Mind at Ease]
[Forward Movement] - Ignoring the maturity here, available only for Explorator classes or players with the Stars aspect.
[Fermentation]
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Sloth
The opposite of restlessness and impatience, and similar to Apathy, only it's less about not caring as much as not caring ENOUGH.
[Upward Gaze]
[Forward Movement]
[Extra, Extra]
[Get Up]
[Goo Goo G'joob] - Beatles reference? Or something to do with the Others? Either way, it's sort of... what you get if you're just really not at all slothful, but you ran into the quest anyway. This is probably here because the Moon Quest [Lap of Luxury] automatically triggers a Sloth choice if you spend too long in the Just Right Bed. No, I don't know why it's called that.
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Vainglory
MeGaLoVania: The Street. That's basically it- a special kind of Pride regarding achievement in the game itself, worshipping one's own accomplishments, and refusing to sweat the small stuff.
[Lilliputianary Reaction]
[Harleboss] - An option, yeah. I don't know why the hell it's there, since I can't think of a reason to reward the player for totally failing on the first try, but there you go. Players actually suffering from MGLV aren't going to be helped by this quest.
[Downtime]
[All the Pretty Little Ponies] - Learning to appreciate your quest and the antics of consorts and carapaces. Getting more "down to earth", you know?
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vvv&5050;
Okay, this one is CRITICALLY FUCKED UP. It's a glitched Street that was presumably added for testing purposes and was never removed, and all in-game dialogue related to it is bugged (which is how you can tell you're stuck in one). There will always be three Heartjams, all of which are just single tones and will make your Sarabande sound like shit unless you're clever about it, and actually achieving them is a process that can be either really convoluted or really simple, depending on what it's attached itself to.
-CRITICAL WARNING-
vvv&5050; freezes the quest completion script until you win, making it impossible to finish any quest- despite fulfilling the completion conditions. For quests whose completion can only be accomplished once (such as the Slaying of the Beast), this will render that quest permanently incomplete. As you can imagine, this has the potential to render an entire session unwinnable, so DO NOT LEAVE THIS QUEST UNFINISHED.
[vvv%0] - Achieved via a dynamically generated simple physical action. If you're lucky, this will be clear from context- climbing a wall, breaking an object, running from danger, or something else that requires physical exertion. Otherwise, flail around and make a scene until something happens.
[vvv%1] - Achieved via powerful meditation. It took us a while to figure out the exact sequence, but you have to 1) Concentrate on the color red. Like, REALLY HARD. Think about the color red and let it fill your being entirely. Once that's done, 2) start meditating on the most adorable thing you've ever seen- this step is unlocked by a mighty internal squee. Kittens work well. The last step, 3) Do math problems in your head until you get the Heartjam. Nothing too complex, just basic arithmetic or simple algebra or geometry. Doesn't really matter. Congratulations, you've earned the single most arbitrary Heartjam in the history of ever. If you're wondering why it's so specific, don't ask us- we're assuming they used it to test identification for certain thought categories.
[vvv%2] - The first one was physical exertion, the second was mental, and the last is emotional exertion. It'll randomly want ecstasy, fury, terror, remorse (you'll need to do something bad if you haven't already), despair, or confusion. Just go one by one until you get it, unless you'd rather try the other two.
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Whimsy
Not a character flaw, I think? If your head's just plain not screwed on right, and you do stuff just because you feel like it... well, you're probably a Rain or Fate player. Both of whom can use [Null Sequitur] here, so there you go. Anyway, this is Sburb's way of telling you to be less crazy, and it's probably right.
[Put Your Mind at Ease]
[KISS]
[Extra, Extra]
[Time Running By] - Kind of like Forward Movement- realizing that you don't have time to indulge your flights of fancy, and getting the fuck on with things.
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@***Miscellaneous Heartjams***@
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There's a lot of general-purpose Heartjams in the game that can apply to just about any Street under the right conditions. Exploiting these is highly recommended when possible, unless you want your Sarabande to sound all pretty and/or actually play the game the way it's meant to be played. (pfffff) Feel free to let me know (spacetimeCounselor on Pesterchum) if you've encountered additional Heartjams- this guide is by no means complete, since we're working from... like, about thirty players' worth of data.
[Hate You]
Okay, so, this is the most egregiously bonkers Heartjam as far as I know. [Hate You] can be earned pretty much universally- it generally corresponds to intense feelings of self-loathing. Yeah, apparently low self-esteem is not a Darkened Street, but an all-purpose remedy for literally any maturity problem- a panacea for personality flaws. This is... either really reflective of the game's fucked-up perspective on maturity, or something that was supposed to be removed but wasn't. Thankfully, it's one of the more easily-faked options, if you've got the underlying feelings- just vocally moaning about how pathetic you are seems to do the trick. It's not bad in your Sarabande, either- kind of lilting and lovely and other L words that I love to lay out to laud my loquaciousness.
Still, Sburb does unconsciously reinforce your choices (moreso than basic human behavior reinforcement does), so trying to score [Hate You] too often can mess the fuck with your head and lead to feelings of suicide (which doesn't work thanks to exiles, but there you go), resentment, and, in the event that you really truly don't actually hate yourself much, a psychotic break that's likely to put you on a PK spree. Generally, scoring [The Price of Oblivion] is a better idea, unless you're really just trying to speed through your maturity quests- which is missing the point, if the point is a thing you care about.
[Fermentation]
This is the bottling-up one- it's not super dangerous by itself, but if you overuse it you're liable to end up with a whole lot of suppressed negativity- perfect fuel for a Berserk Trigger (which is often "fated" to happen anyway) or just a general break with reality that makes you go psycho and all. If you find yourself relying on this, you'll want your friends spamming you with psy-buffs a lot.
[Null Sequitur]
Hahaha, this one is fun. Let's get this out of the way- Rain Players? You basically get to forget all about maturity, and just cackle your way to the finish line- claiming victory through total unfettered insanity. Acting like a total nutjob will earn you this Heartjam in just about every situation- and you get a pretty huge roleplay coefficient bonus for it, too! In fact, while actually growing up as a person is kind of on hold for you, you'll want to do maturity quests as often as possible- the coefficient boost is great for ability casting. Unless, of course, you rely on it too much, in which case it becomes predictable and you lose coefficient, as if you were playing Dreams. But... not all the time, because following rules is for suckers apparently. Anyway, Cryptic classes and sometimes Fate players can shoot for this Heartjam in certain situations, but it's not nearly as all-encompassing as it is for Rain players. Lucky sons of fucks.
[I Love Rogue]
Previously mentioned, this Heartjam applies to Displacement classes (Thief and Rogue) as well as Sand players- and Cryptic classes in some situations. Certain Streets like Greed, Envy, the L/O/L triumvirate, and especially Deceit must be embraced for you to roleplay properly, so the game provides a workaround. Basically you got to be a total fuckin' scoundrel all the time and get away with it. [I Love Rogue] isn't automatic, though- you'll need to identify the correct choice or else take a roleplay hit.
[www&--;]
Glitched Heartjam, shows up in Vainglory, Restlessness, Fear and Paranoia. Pretty harmless, it's just you'll occasionally be in the middle of making a choice and then suddenly auto-win. There's no associated music bit, usually, but thankfully that just means you don't need to worry about it rather than having to incorporate silence into your composition.
[My Serenity]
Your maturity has been kidnapped by Sburb! Are you a Zen enough dude to rescue your maturity? This one seems to activate specifically for like, the whole proper meditation and mind-clearing exercise, and being like really all kinds of spaced out and not giving a shit. It'll work for almost everything but Sloth and Apathy, for obvious reasons. Sitting around doing nothing doesn't work by itself, so unless you've really got what it takes you're out of luck. Fun fact: players afflicted with the DERP can totally score this one, if they have the presence of mind to be on quests in the first place. Anyway, hey dudes, thanks for listening to me. Let's go for a burger.... ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
[The Price of Oblivion]
As mentioned, it's what you get if you just completely fail at personal growth. The game doesn't want to slow you down if you're already bothering to go on these quests, so they give you a failure option. Frequently, though, the game won't decide you're done- more often than not, if you fail at lighting a Darkened Street, it'll just give you another quest on the same street later, especially in the case of Despair. And then, even if you do pick this up, they'll slap you with the Street a few more times for good measure until they're sure you're good and stable in your personal development.
What a fuckin' drag.
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@***Glitches and Exploits***@
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Welcome to Sburb, everything is horribly coded and totally broken basically all the time, so shit will get wrecked and you're going to have to deal with it. Here's some major pitfalls to look out for, and convenient tricks you can use to make things easier for yourself.
-GLITCH: You probably can't handle crazy-
Mist players, as usual, get the game all confused. Who the hell does it think they are? Well, a hint: it thinks they're Rain or Sand players for the purposes of abusing [Null Sequitur] and [I Love Rogue], if you've got one of them (or a cryptic or displacement class) in your session. Problem is, not only will it not help your roleplay coefficient much (do not get me STARTED on how badly Mist can fuck up roleplaying, holy jeez)- it'll reinforce the associated thought patterns and drive you crazy (in the case of [Null Sequitur] abuse) or evil ([I Love Rogue]), or both if they really put their minds to it. So, it should go without saying? Don't go for those if you're not the right class, dammit. There's some others that are less systematically dangerous- you can grab [Time on my Side] or other usually-aspect-locked Jams, and most of those are pretty safe.
-EXPLOIT/WARNING: Don't take shortcuts-
Heart players! You guys... kind of can break the system. You can go ahead and tweak your own Shiny (or those of teammates) to satisfy the more abstract quest requirements (those that require you to just feel a certain way rather than take a specific representative action). I'd like to warn you not to do that, because it's just as scary-brainwashy as what the game normally does, if not more. And also messing with the Shiny to modify complex traits like emotions is inherently risky and can have horrible consequences- but this is Sburb, horrible consequences are pretty much everywhere no matter what you do. Still, bad idea.
-GLITCH: What the hell does luck even mean anyway-
I'm not sure if it's a good idea to mention this, but Law players (or Light displacements) can make someone unlucky enough to run into vvv&5050; multiple times. Which- and this makes me SO MAD- doesn't make ANY sense, because if it's an unintended glitch then HOW the hell does the game recognize it as a "bad" event that can happen if you're statistically "unlucky"??? I seriously get the feeling that whoever made this game had no idea what they were dealing with when they made all their shit depend on Skaia's weird predestination/luck contradictory clusterfuck.
-EXPLOIT: Stock up on sister streets-
When the game initializes a maturity choice event, it doesn't pick one decision for one Darkened Street. While the quest itself is usually invisibly tied to a certain Street, the decision is a separate entity that signals all active maturity quests. Usually, the choice structure will be specific enough to only flag one, but if you've got a bunch of similar quests going on at once, you'll frequently end up triggering multiple Heartjams. Envy/Longing/Lust/Obsession/Greed/Avarice/Jealousy is the big one- they pretty much all respond to [Table of Contentment] or [Forward Movement]-type choices, and if you play your cards right you can get like six or seven Heartjams in one quest. Common Heartjams like My Serenity or Friendship is Paramount are also useful for scoring overlap Jams.
-GLITCH: Please shut the fuck up, old man-
There's a common templated maturity quest you'll receive from Consort Elders- they'll offer you a choice between three or four trinkets with different themes- like maybe a weapon, a communication device, or some glasses- stuff you can easily guess at the thematic significance of. Sometimes the guy will get caught in an infinite dialogue bug- for real- if you ask him about the meaning of the choices on a meta level. We found it happened like 2-3% of the time, usually when one of the trinkets was actually several smaller trinkets like a bagful of marbles or something. You can either slap him across the face and lose Land reputation, pick the trinket he's describing to interrupt him, or pick a different trinket and let him babble on for an eternity- which isn't a good idea if you're relying on him for future quests.
-CRITICAL GLITCH: Pants-shitting terror: the least of your problems???-
So you guys have heard of the Psychoruins, right? Creepy dungeon-type area where the game tries to scare the bajeezus out of you, B horror movie-style? Yeah, well, I'm guessing the maturity programmers and the land feature programmers didn't talk much, because Consorts love to send you there for the Fear Street. Well, word of advice: DON'T. There's an elementary feedback loop where the game first artificially heightens your adrenaline, and then the quest will check to see if you've become less fearful, notice that you haven't, and then invisibly reset the quest parameters to deal with your new fear level... which pings the Psychoruins quest reset flag, which boosts your fear again... you can see where this is going. If you don't die from fatal adrenaline poisoning (a thing, apparently?), the game will eventually decide you're hopeless and give you [The Price of Oblivion], but by that point you will literally be out of your mind with terror.
There's ways around this- and you'll need them if you want to do anything in the Psychoruins after picking up that Fear quest. Psy-buffs can artificially calm someone down long enough to trigger the quest complete conditions, and a good Heart player can scrub the fear from your Shiny. It's always recommended to have a buddy keep close contact with you when you're in the Psychoruins for any reason, in case you started the Fear quest and didn't know it.
-EXPLOIT: Repeating your buddies' quests-
This is diving into Vigilandism a bit- you might want to check some V-FAQs to get a hold of how to manage the [Hey Soul Brother] player command, deal with pendants or otherwise fake your way into player-exclusive land quests. Basically, ID bugs let players from another Land repeat certain maturity quests completed by the native player- good for when you want to be sure you're addressing a particular Street. Usual Vigilandism caveats like losing your own Land Rep when foreign consorts blow your cover apply.
-WARNING: Undoing "maturity"-
If you're anything like me, you might be a bit suspicious of the borderline mind-control the game sticks you with on these maturity quests. If, for whatever reason, you want to revert to base maturity, you have a few options, none of which are particularly safe. The easiest way is to let a doomed timeclone go on the quests, and have it relay the learned Heartjam to your alpha self. You won't get the instaknowledge (unless you're under the timeclone memory-sync condition, which I don't know a lot about), but if you're musically inclined you should be able to craft a passable Sarabande.
There's a couple other ways- using the Heart Thing to manipulate someone's Shiny, obviously, but again that is hella risky. Lastly, you can do it the hard way, which is by doing more maturity quests opposite to the traits you want to undo. Like, take Apathy quests if you want to negate the effects of "overcoming" Anxiety. It won't always cancel out neatly- you'll get better results if you pick a Jam diametrically opposite to your original choice, like picking Sweet Dreams, Timaeus when the original modification was Extra, Extra.
The major gotcha for all of these is that the game will check you on your maturity... basically all the time. Your maturity generally only has subtle effects on Land quests and moon reputation, but there's one major check- the game takes player maturity into account when reading the "health" of your session and timing the Reckoning. Everything we've found so far has an accelerative effect on that script, so... either live with the Maturity choices you've made or be ready to rush off to the Black King at some inconvenient time.
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@***Later, dudes***@
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So by now you've hopefully got a handle on how all this works. To recap: Find quests, make choices, get Heartjams, compose Sarabande, wake your Denizen, and then try not to get killed by everything else the game throws at you. Make sure to keep track of how your personal journey changes you, because you might miss it if you're not paying attention. There's a lot of room to direct your growth within the system, but it'll never turn out the way you thought it would. Watch out for glitches, and be smart about your choices. Who knows? Maybe you'll learn something.
[ADDENDUM].future(): irc's gonna give me hell for this, but it's worth mentioning i basically skipped everything i possibly could; i'll be honest and say a hell of a lot of my info comes from doomed selves- i don't trust the game any further than i can throw it, so i opted for the bare minimum for my Song and kept this game's big brother mind control tendrils as far away from my head as possible. most of you are gonna want to just play the game "right" and stay safe and sound, but if you want to stick it to the Man/Omnipotent doom game, just know you're in for a hard time. these quests are where they do most of the messing with your head, so watch out
ADDENDUM from the present instead of whatever time hacking future me is doing: dude you know i'm gonna be the one catching flak for telling people not to trust the game right
[ADDENDUM].future(): yeah well if sheeple want to keep everyone's eyes closed that's their perogative, so just fuckin deal with it
ADDENDUM (still the present): when exactly did i start being an asshole, again