[Part 1](https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterProm/comments/1lt5u4z/the_masochists_journey_pt_1_100_acheivements/) | [Part 2](https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterProm/comments/1lztyw7/the_masochists_journey_pt2_100_acheivements/) | [Part 3](https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterProm/comments/1m5oxfi/the_masochists_journey_part_3_100_acheivements/) | [Part 4](https://www.reddit.com/r/MonsterProm/comments/1mbn13m/the_masochists_journey_part_4_100_achievements/)

Hello again and thanks for reading!  First up though, some retractions (I cannot edit older posts):

***Almost*** **everything I said about Big Plotline RNG in Week 3 is wrong.**  The error messages that show up in the logs are not assigned by event number; it's the **Turn number** that the error shows up. (AKA: "Big Plotline event 2: No suitable event found" means that on turn 2 (End of Week1 Lunch), an RNG ending tried to start but no player met the criteria for the event to trigger.).  As far as I know, there is no way to determine which RNG ending the game was trying to get started via the logs.

**I still stand by my assertion that if an RNG plotline isn't showing up at all when focusing on one character, that doing a quick 4-player game with different ROs usually re-prioritizes the one you're aiming for.**  Though that is still mostly from my experiences; I'm too far along to go back and start actually recording this data.

  
With that out of the way, let's talk about my findings/progress for this week (I was fortunate enough to make up for a weak weeks 3-4):

# N: *looks at the screenshots* "...Wait. You've finished all of Polly's events and outcomes!?"

Yep!

# N: "...AND you also got the Prankmasterz and Locket endings done too!?"

Yep! Normal Item endings are easy to get all outcomes for, so I figured that, instead of saving *all* of them for last, I would finish off items alongside ROs that feature prominently in them (Val's declassified, however, is an exception, as it only needed to be used 2x to get all outcomes before I started this journey; I'll have to keep it mind for the Vera Perspectives)

# N: "AND you've already finished Scott's "Pick" events!?"

Sure did! Scott has a LOT of Pick events that had a Smarts outcomes, too (though rarely the Smarts favored him).  I'll talk more about that when I'm done with him.

# N: "Only 300 outcomes left to get from first term?!"

Yesh! I was pleasantly surprised I was able to get that exact screenshot of the 300 outcomes left.  Even cooler is the fact that exactly half of them are normal event outcomes, and that item outcomes make up a large portion of the remaining half.

# N: "Ok, well let's focus on Fan-Favorite Polly first.  What was particularly interesting/hard about going after her?"

\- **Like Damien, her "Main" stats are Fun/Bold** (in comparison to D's Bold/Fun), **but her Prom requirements are overall harder**.  In a Regular (Long) SP game, Polly needs 20+ Hearts, 15+ FUN, and 10+ BOLD (As opposed to D's 16+ Hearts, 17+BOLD, and 10+FUN).  Polly needs just as many hearts as Scott (who, again, doesn't have any other requirements besides hearts), and only Vera requires more (24+, as well as 15+Smarts,11+Charm, and 10+Money)

\- **Polly's "Dump" stats are not as clear-cut as Damien's.**  While you are still in "Pick" events, 15/16 events featuring her have either Bold, Fun, or both options to pick from (9/11 of the FUN options favor Polly, and 4/7 Bold options favor her as well), with only 3x total among the 14x Smarts+Creative+Charm options favoring her.  In her "Normal" events, 28/36 feature either Fun, Bold, or both as choices, with Charm and Creative sitting on the bottom as the "standard dump stats".

\- **If you add all her Date, Followup, and Special event Outcomes to her standard outcomes, her main stats are actually in the minority.  (Smarts x 21, Creative x20, Charm x20, Fun x18, Bold x18, Money x3)**. While FUN/BOLD make up a majority of the outcomes from her "Anywhere" events, they drop off in the location-specific and multiple character events, and almost entirely drop off in her featured item endings (0 Fun and only 1 Bold between both the Prankmasterz and GhostStory plotlines).  Because of this even distribution, it makes sense that Polly is one of the hardest (if not THE hardest; will confirm when Vera's done) characters to Romance in the base game (Especially those that don't understand how the skill checks work).

\- **Polly has only 10x Zonefails out of 36x Location-specific events**  (Compared to Damien's 12x).  That was nice, except...

**- Location events were difficult to get out of Polly, as she has 8(+2) "Anywhere" Events that get in the way of farming specific locations.** Of those 8 events, 2 more followup events can occur based on your selection, as well as 2 more followups from Pick events featuring her (one with Miri and one with Damien).  While grinding out routes, I had to keep in mind to always pick the "Creative" option on "MindManipulators" (Vera + Polly Anywhere), and always fail "InterdimensionalBach" (LPV Anywhere), otherwise there was a very real possiblility of missing a location event I'm looking for, even on a long SP game.  While this CAN be easier to get a specific location-based outcome on a long 3+ player game (and make the PC that's going after the outcome/event go last every turn to get more "anywhere" events out of the pool), I found it too slow and unproductive at times, and was able to button mash quicker through single player games, even with some runs giving me absolutely nothing.

\- **Speaking of Hard, the Option1 Success option on Wilkinson3 is probably the hardest individual outcome to get in the base game.**  For the Reverse-Romanian-Wilkinson plotline, the last event competes Money (option1) with Charm (option2), as you try to buy a kilo of guacamole off of Liam, who's basically extorting you for your deviant hobbies (probably the evilest thing Liam does in the whole 1st game NOT tied to his backstory).  Remember that this being the final event of a run, the "Auto-Fail" threshold is at its highest (6 or lower on Long SP), Money is *not easy* to get in a run (if you're not following Vera or the Prince+Coven don't show up at lunch), AND you have to buy a Penguin mask for $10 (which also boosts charm by +4), meaning you just made a 14 point swing in favor of Charm.  BARE MINIMUM you need to accumulate +12 Money between the starting quiz and Week 6 Morning (+8 Money by Week 2 Morning on Short MP), while keeping Charm below 3 (-3 on short MP), otherwise you have to make a LOT more money just to stay ahead of your charm on the final skill check (I think the only feasible way to get this on a Short MP game is the Lottery Ticket out of the Gift that Keeps on Giving in the Shop on Week2 Morning, provided the player got the Coke2 event on Turn 3 (Week1 Evening)).  **Because of all this having the deck stacked against you, I think it's fair to say that the majority of players who got the RRW ending did it via Option2 Success, and not the other way around.  Geeez.**

\- **Early Characterizations Retrospective -** Looking back on Polly's start (after getting past End of the Road and being emotionally devastated from that), its charming to see how far she's come since starting.  While those that may have only played 1-2 games focusing on her may just see her as the 1-dimensional Party/Sex/Drugs stereotype, seeing all her failure and success outcomes illustrate just how much "in-control" she usually is at all times.  Naturally, the Locket ending and shining a light on Serious Polly is a tremendous gut-punch to the feels that acknowledges that sometimes we *can't* always resolve things in a short wacky misadventure...but also IT IS OK TO FAIL ON THE LAST EVENT OF THAT PLOTLINE BECAUSE YOU GET SCOTT'S COVEN DISGUISE.  I...there's soo much I wanna say about the series, the love the writers and the team have for their characters, but I don't think here in this week's post is the right stuff.  Polly is constantly in my top 2 characters (tossup between her and Vera), so I'll have a much more thought-out write-up in a later entry (Likely after finishing Roadtrip's achievements)

\- **Notable Running Gags** \- Polly and Vera occassionaly fuck with the Wolfpack/Scott by having "Notes" drop down from the Sun/Moon on different Lunch/Pick event occasions, causing Scott to believe he's friends with the Sun, and why he *won't* help Damien Punch the Sun in the PTS plotline.  Additionally, Cool Josh makes his first (text-only) appearance in Event 2 of the PrankMasterz plotline.  Also, various Pick and Outdoor events featuring both Polly and Liam give us quite a lot of Backstory to MCGriffin, the Artist featured on one of the items you can bring to Camp in the sequel (who also raps about Griffins' longstanding hatred of lasagna; The Pasta trafficking problem the Color Squad/Damien/Scott started, perhaps?)

# N: So...Scott's up next.  He doesn't have any "Main" stats, so is that "easier"?

Hardly.  There's two problems that are staring me right in the face.  The first is his RNG Cocaine Plotline.  Like the VGift and Orgy endings, it's 4 events instead of 3, but CokePunch and CokeCoach are branching final events based on the choice I make in Coke2.  This means that there are 2x MORE Success outcomes than normal.  And when you "beat" a plotline, it falls out of the RNG pool for a period of time, so I need to still get 3x more successes, and not just the single success that I haven't gotten like most of the other RNG endings.

The Second problem is (once again) the Location-based events.  Scott only has 5 "Anywhere" events that feature just him, but he and Liam have an anywhere event called "Potatochips" that will ALWAYS have a followup event "SocialJusticeReturn", regardless of outcome in Potatochips.  So His Library events (5x of them) and Bathroom events (6x of them) will prove to be VERY difficult to get fully finished, as even on an 18 turn Long SP game, even if I go to the same location every turn (and Valerie's shop NEVER blocks the location, which is rare), there's still a chance the location-specific event I want DOESN'T show up due to bad RNG.

# N: Lastly, 300 outcomes to go.  Do you have any strats/further analysis?

Well, I'll break them down by Category:

**Standard:** Same strat; focus on 1x character at a time, do Long SP runs to get the outcomes needed.  Aim for specific locations at a time.  Miri/Liam/Vera have features in about 50x each of these (with natural overlap), while Scott's in about 35 of them.  Only one Event is unseen in this list so far (VeraLegalOpen, a followup to a Vera Bathroom event).  Zonefails still prove to be difficult, however, but as long as I plan carefully (and make use of shop items), I can usually get what I need to be a failure in the back half.

**Pick**: With only 12x left to go (and only 3x of them are Smarts failures), my current strategy is working just fine for 1st term smartsfail outcomes (I'll address the 2nd term elephant later): Restart a Long SP game with Money or competing stat focus as quiz selection answers (and get a starting Smarts of 6 or 7), FAIL the first event that focuses on the RO needed in the first event, select the opposite RO at lunch, and Stall by visiting Valerie in the shop until week 2 Morning.  By this point, you'll likely still be doing Pick events, and the "auto-success" threshold is now 7.  As long as the competing stat is higher than Smarts (and you managed to keep it at 6 or lower), you can get the smartsfail that way.

**Advice:** 3P Long game with everyone focusing on the same character will always get the 3P+ advice events in the Weekend 2 event.  I tend to avoid doing this in 4P because it is incredibly hard to keep all 4 PCs on the same RO due to how Lunch events are structured (1 player has to sit at a table with two other ROs, effectively risking changing their route).  I still need both of these for Miranda and 1x of them for Scott to show up.  The other half come from exactly 2P long games, during the 2nd weekend event.

**Weekend:** Short 4-player games work best here.  Every Weekend event has a varying combination of the main ROs (2x of them have 4, 1x has just 2), and if all 3 are locked on the player routes (and with short MP games, we don't do pick events so this is VERY easy), you can pretty easily get the exact event you want. \**Note that in short MP games, the failure threshold is the same as long MP games at the Weekend Event, so there is no need to do a long MP game to farm outcomes\*.*  MysteryMachine is going to be the hardest to get outcomes for, as it only shows up for Scott/Polly routes, and you can still just as easily get SeniorTeaParty or BusinessInvestmentTime events (also has a Polly/Scott combination)

**Special**: Do them when they show up.  Scott's Cocaine ending has the most holes to fill, followed by Vera's BLOODYQUEEN route, Liam's YaoiArtist route, and Valerie's secret ending (though that one I can trigger whenever).  Anytime I need to refresh the RNG plotline errors, Scott will most likely ALWAYS be one of the ROs I select.

**Date:** Short MP or short SP games work best here.  a Date event is always guaranteed on a short MP game for one of the PCs (even if everyone is failing hard), so as long as I'm careful to not change routes, these won't be too hard.  Polly's "CrashParty" date events took the longest to show up (just bad luck I guess)

**Item:** Prioritize Money outcomes and Vera in the quiz/pick events (Vera's outcomes typically also award money, especially the Scott/Vera "TVShowIdeas" Pick event, which awards +3 Money) to get the item early on a short SP game (Consider longer games for the expensive $12 items like the Angel Blood, Floppy Disk, and Z'gord Totem).  I'm tempted to see the Rejection images from the Blanket w/holes ending if they linger into the Gallery.

  
Anyways, Exciting MonProm-related stuff ahead! Hopefully I can wrap up 1st (and maybe 2nd term) before the Online MP mode gets fixed, but anyways feel free to leave a comment.  They really supplement my enthusiasm with continuing this series.  Until next week and wish me all the RNG luck!

The Masochist's Journey: Part 5 (100% Achievements)