Drinking Perk Penalties

Gameplay
#1

Almost all of the drinking perks have debuffs associated with them. Other skills also have perks with negative effects, but nowhere near as many. As far as I can tell, there are only 5 other skill perks with explicit penalties (please tell me if I missed any):

Water of Life
Heavy Duty Pony
Racehorse
Rider on the Storm
Luck of the Drunk (only sort of a downgrade)

For comparison, there are SEVEN perks with penalties in the drinking skill, more than every other skill combined. Also, “Luck of the Drunk” and “Water of Life” are at least related to drinking, even if they aren’t under the drinking skill.

The only ones that don’t are Safe Passage and Top Shelf. Why is it that almost 80% of the drinking perks needed to be “balanced” with penalties? Especially when almost all the other perks in the game have purely beneficial effects.

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#2

Also, the True Slav perk is just the worst.

The Beer Bibber, Wine Bibber, and Top Shelf Perks all let you drink more of a certain type of alcohol. The Drunk perk removes negative effects from being too drunk. The Bacchus perk and Safe Passage are both allow you to safely drink yourself into oblivion, one by making you wake up safe and the other by straight up making it impossible.

All of these perks seem to be based around the idea of letting you drink more. The first three reduce the strength of alcohol, Drunk makes it so you can safely drink past the halfway point, and Bacchus/Safe Passage let you safely drink as much as you please.

The description of the Drinking skill states that by improving it “You’ll be able to drink up to twice as much”.

So why is there a perk that lets you drink less??? And not just a little bit less, but half as much. If its supposed to help you save money, why not just have it make alcohol cheaper? Like the reading perk? Or better yet, make it so the beneficial effects of alcohol come on twice as fast, so that you get the max benefit at 25% drunkeness instead of 50%, but your overall “capacity” is the same. But having a perk that has literally the opposite effect as leveling up the skill is just stupid.

#3

Maybe because drinking (too much) is in reality also stupid, … but sometime fun… :joy:

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#4

I don’t think I follow.

#5

It’s nice you take those numbers and debuffs apart but it’s still drinking skill. I barely levelled that up by the end of my playline. I only recently invested time into planning my drinking setup to maximize it if possible with positive effects on some crucial other skills. I do not see them very helpful for my previous playstyle but if someone suddenly got to overdose himself with schnapps or even drinking too much just for fun, they might find some perks funny too, not that they should make Henry with superhero powers. I think he is overpowered even by normal means. This is more like experiencing usual stuff but with shaky screen and harder. While some don’t nake sense to delete each others effects.

#6

I have been trying to play this game as a scumbag drunkard, and today I discovered that you can actually benefit from drinking yourself to unconsciousness.

There is a low chance that you will wake up next to a chest full of treasure. The one I woke up next to was in a deer stand that was accessible no other way; no ladder, no rocks to jump on, no way up. I had to jump down to get out of it. I got some really good gear out of it (pretty good mace, super good shield worth about 800g, and a few other pieces of armour and food), two saviour schnapps, and about 200 groeschens (or however you spell it).

So don’t be afraid to drink as much as you’d like, it can sometimes benefit you. I have only passed out about five times, and this is the first time this has happened to me. Not sure what the odds are, will report back after further binge drinking.

tl;dr Drank until I passed out, woke up in deer stand that could only be accessed by waking up in it, got over 1000g worth of treasure.

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#7

Many perks have some inconveniences:
-all perks affecting stats (like ken, juggler, brute etc…) will cap some stats below 20
-ascetic (once hungry the debuff is higher)
-contemplative (can’t sleep off/wait off overeating)
-heavy swing (will consume more stamina per strike, makes you more vulnerable to melee damage, because melee hits deplete stamina first)
-light striker (your hits with one handed swords are faster but weaker)
-tin opener/ weapon cruncher (armor/arms used by enemies deteriorate faster, so they lose some effectiveness and a lot of value, they’re also more expensive to repair if you want to keep them
-sprinter/marathon runner (one makes you run a bit faster for a bit shorter range, the other does the opposite)
-dreadful (enemies are more likely to run away, along with most of the loot)
-boar (increases the chances of causing health damage when running into someone, unless you pay attention riding a horse around people you’ll probably trample a few civilians to death and get jail time)
-local hero/villain (one will make it harder to increase your reputation but give you greater benefits for high reputation, the other will make the opposite)
-sword perks (while not exclusive, you won’t get enough points to earn them all, so chosing one locks you out from others, also some can’t be performed without a free off hand).

Many perks have downsides, so they’re more like character traits in Fallout (albeit earned) - make your character more specialized, not necessarily better or worse. Drinking perks give you the choice to customize your character in several ways, you can take the beer/wine biber to endure smaller or larger amounts of booze by simply choosing what you drink at a given moment, you can be that person who never passes out, or the one who never suffers any penalties from passing out.

The drinking skill tree is imo the most useless one, only good for immersion. Unless you save with Saviour Schnapps or drink with Godwin, you can complete the game without ever tasting alcohol.

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