Wildermyth is a game all about characters and stories – which means player choices. At various times during the game you will come across events (either scripted or procedurally selected) that require you to choose one of three options. These situations and the choices available are presented in the form of comics including some of your characters.
You might have noticed that there are sometimes percentage values given at the bottom right of some of the options. However the game doesn’t explain what these numbers mean. In this post, I’ll go through how it all works.
Story Event Decisions
When a story event occurs, the mechanism for what happens is highly flexible and gives developers and modders many options for telling their stories. Although an event can be extremely complex, most of the time there are three main elements to the comic choice panels:
- The Choices
Most story events have between two and four options for you to choose between. These will have been determined by the story writer. - The Characters
Each available option will be championed by one of your characters. Exactly which character depends on their attributes – this could be personality trait, stat, relationship etc. For example, a cowardly character might suggest running away whereas a bookish one might suggest researching the situation. Again, the relevant conditions will have been determined by the event author. - Success Percentage
This is where those numbers come in. Some choices can have outcomes which give a benefit on success and/or a disadvantage on failure. These outcomes can affect anything from combat advantage to character relationships. The chance of a ‘successful’ outcome is determined from the stats of the character championing that option. And that is the percentage you see on the option. If no percentage is shown, it means that particular choice doesn’t have a conditional outcome.
So putting it simply: the percentage figure is the chance of a successful outcome.
Does that mean you should always choose the option with the highest percentage success chance? Absolutely not. Wildermyth is about stories, I always choose the one that best fits the way I see my characters acting. Even if you are minimaxing, you don’t know the potential gains/losses from the different choices. A low chance of a very substantial benefit might be better than a high chance of a minor benefit.
So having explained what the choice percentages mean, my advice is to ignore them!