That was close! Nail bitter IMO! Emotions going up, down, DOWN, then up (kinda). Thank you!

BGG Ranking on the date each episode aired: Episode 1 (May 23, 2024) Overall: 1183 Thematic: 144 Episode 2 (May 25, 2024) Overall: 1181 Thematic: 143 Episode 3 (May 29, 2024) Overall: 1163 Thematic: 141 Episode 4 (June 3, 2024) Overall: 1131 Thematic: 138 Episode 5 (June 5, 2024) Overall: 1106 Thematic: 136

@rRob: I know I'm behind on watching your streams, and you might not even see this, but I think there was a misinterpretation of the rules during your fight with the woman around the 1:30-1:50 mark. The dialogue book said if you "took into account" more than two successes she would instantly die. Due to this, you chose to intentionally lose a couple rounds of combat. I don't think you had to do that. Looking at the rule book, I'm almost certain that only the stars from your drawn cards count as "taking successes into account" (pg12 section 3B "Take successes into account"). The stars you get from items and your cards in hand count as "additional successes" (pg13, section 3C "Apply the effects of their cards"). Anyway, I just found your channel. Love the streams, though I haven't caught any live yet. I hope you keep playing 7th Citadel!

You are right that there should be other ways to clear the negatives... but even if you find something during the game play exploration that only clears what you have currently. It looks like the buildings let you clear them at the start of each session moving forward, so that if you got any in the last session after finding one of those spots you would be covered. You say something similar in this session with the timing of those one cards. You were rewarded with something you had, so you couldn't take it. And then the very next test caused a condition that you needed that reward to clear, so you ended without that bonus. Not necessarily bad game design, but perhaps leaning into the nature of optimization might suggest that the buildings are a bit more reliable than the RNG of finding the other ways through exploration. Big caveat, I haven't played, so I don't know what the "other" ways are that the chat implied are available. If they are permanent upgrades or equipment you can discover that allows a once per session "heal" then they would be about equal to the buildings, with the added flexibility that you can use them mid session instead of only at the beginning.

It sounds like in this scenario the overall goal was to fix/test the road to make sure the wagon with the heavy stone could make it back to the citadel. To do that successfully you need to discover three objective cards. Like in episode 3 I think your exploration took you in a direction that lead away from the overall goal, which meant not finding the required objective cards to succeed at the goal. It doesn't mean you can't explore anywhere you want and find useful stuff. Arguably in episode 3 you found some really useful stuff by going away from the goal. Unfortunately it seems like in this one you got punished by bad draws, and not finding the cool stuff with this exploration that lead away from the goal. When you found the first objective by taking care of the termites in the 'road" I thought you were on the right track, but I agree that it then seemed to be a little lax in providing clear clues as to the direction to proceed. (Making this comment at the 3:05:47 mark, so hopefully things improve from that point). Edit: I originally wrote episode 2, but once you watched back the previous streams it was episode 3