A Guide to Sin

[hanako]

This is sort of explained by the priest in the city, but since no one would want him to go on and on and on about it, he gives the short form. I can't remember if I've explained this in detail for those that want to know, so here is the longer explanation.

There are several common problems that occur in games with sin/karma mechanics. One is that you can be considered an evil demon for only doing a tiny little sin, if you do it often enough. Say your character steals an apple, and thats worth 1 sin. Fine. But you steal 100 apples, and suddenly you're considered the most evil being imaginable, even though you've never hurt anyone or done anything else bad at all, you just stole apples.

So for this game, different kinds of sin are treated separately. If you steal once, you get a tiny amount of thief sin. If you steal constantly, you gain thief sin for a while, but then you stop gaining anymore. By that point, it's obvious that you're a thief. The game remembers that, and you don't get any more sin for it.

Each 'bad' act is only able to give you so much sin before it's considered part of your character. If you kill a monster once in combat, that might have been an accident, that doesn't make you a killer. If you kill dozens of monsters, you're probably the kind of character that wants to kill things.

Stealing, striking the first blow, being a bully, killing animals for food, killing for fun/profit, murdering the helpless... All of these things can end up as marks on your character. So even if your overall sin is low, if you are clearly a thief that might affect your ending.

The other problem in games with karma is that you can be a horrible evil murderer but get off free in the end because you gave apples to orphans. Which is why in this particular game, sin is very hard to get rid of. If you murder someone, you can't make that better.

And no, it probably wont work the same way in the sequel (assuming there is one). The point's been made, there will be a different point next time. (The point of sin in the first game was to demonstrate the connection between people who kill lots of monsters, and monsters who kill lots of people. Kill enough, and the magical protective field recognised you as a monster too.)

[FaolainnStorm]

I am working on the Bishop/Priest ending, and trying to get my sin up. I have worked as a thief, killed lots of animals/bandits, hunted and gone fishing. I have done each activity until it stopped giving me sin. Yet, I cannot seem to get my sin higher than 75. Is it possible to get 100 sin?

FS

PS Cute Knight and Cute Knight Kingdom are two of my absolute favourite games!

[hanako]

It is possible - the last 25 sin is murder sin, which can only be obtained in a few places in the game. (Killing the inventor after she's surrendered, or killing the goblin children.)

However there is a small bug in the original version of the game which can prevent you from getting murder sin if you've already maxed out your kill sin, so it's quite tricky. This is changed in the upcoming edition, which will also add a special ending for hitting 100 sin.

[k24601]

I'm sorry...but...ugh....the whole sin system is my least favorite part of the game. At least in Cute Knight and games like Princess Maker, there's easy ways to bring your sin down but this game only gave you the one option and that meant you'd have to wait, plus you can't cheat your sin down...it will just go right back up.

Right now I'm also annoyed that some endings, so far, have been too hard to get for me and the way to get the partners ending seems ridiculously complicated compared to how you get a partners ending in the first cute knight game.

Other than a few nitpicks like that, I really like the game.

(And as for the sin thing..well...actually I've never liked how sin was handled in Princess Maker or the first Cute Knight game either...the whole "if you kill monsters you're sinning..." is kinda silly when they're usually hostile and....they are _monsters_ after all. I'm not saying all
"monsters" should be killed, just that it's stupid to get a raise in sin for killing something that was threatening your life in the first place.
I can understand having killed a human rather than let them go free is evil or killing goblin children...ect. but killing dangerous hostiles shouldn't count against you.)

[hanako]

If/when the next game is made, my current thought is that there won't be a stat called "sin" at all, but instead there will be various traits relating to things your character has done, without so much of an obvious value judgment attached to them.

I know some people took offense to, say, hunting being labeled as a sin, because the word "sin" is pretty heavily loaded, so they thought the game was condemning all people who aren't vegetarians... it's more that killing things to eat them is obviously less nice than not doing so. I'm not a vegetarian either! And similarly, going into dungeons and slaughtering everything you see there is less nice than not doing so, while not necessarily "evil".

So if in the next game you do a bunch of hunting and gain the trait "Hunter", it should come across more clearly... it should be obvious why washing windows doesn't make you not a hunter, and it shouldn't make people feel like they're being called evil... traits can have both positive and negative effects.

[k24601]

I agree with you, I see hunting as a sin only if it's done for "sport" and none of the animal gets used for food and materials, ect. I actually am not a big fan of hunting in reality....but in games like this I'll do things that go against my own morals just to see what happens or if there's an ending I'm trying to get just to see all the endings or whatever. And in Oregon Trail, you had to hunt most of the time - (because trading places would be far and few between) - if you got low on meat in your supplies. If I remember correctly...sometimes though you'd luck out and you'd come across people willing to trade things with you, like more meat for blankets or whatever.

Hunting for survival though is another thing entirely.

Yeah, you're right....killing is "less nice" than spooking, "taming", or simply running away.

[Roses]

Question?
How exactly can you get your sin down?
Do you just wait and not do something sinful for a while and then it goes down or what?

[Alopex]

There's only one way to get rid of it, and that's by selecting a certain option at the winter festival. That wipes your sin entirely, but if you go that route, sinning again brings your old score back, and I think you can only do it once. You can't just knock off a little bit.

[Kirroha]

I purified my sin during the festival, but after killing another animal my sin suddenly jumps back up to 62. O:

[hanako]

Your sins only stay forgiven as long as you truly have changed your ways. No easy wiping away of sin and then carrying on as you were before!

[Oki]

Yeah I figured that out as soon as the line "I feel dirty" happened. Great game btw. xD

[ark99k]

Yeah, I know no one has commented here in a while. I just was wondering on this game is there a way to completely avoid sin? I am always being a "Good Girl!" in this game, but when I can't become friends with something (tame) or run away from something, it does NOT count as self defense.

[biscuit]

As far as I recall, it's easiest to avoid killing things by... not fighting things. Since the monsters are displayed as wandering blobs, it is usually (relatively) easy to avoid them, especially if you avoid dungeon-crawling or other events more likely to make you have to fight for your life.

[Hazel]

I've been playing a high-sin run, but so far I've found it's easy enough to wander all over the countryside and not kill anything/anyone. A taming score of thirty will cover animals pretty well, especially if you have additional gear.

With bandits, "tame" will only pay them off with your gold, but there is the option of spooking. Like Sophia says if you unlock that dialogue, bandits are cowards who scare easy. Reasoning: They are not robbing people for the fun of it, they're looking for easy targets.

Tumbleweeds don't spook or tame. Run away from them.

Also, if you want to strike an animal or bandit to make it easier to spook them, make sure your weapon isn't very good (or no weapon at all), because I once reacquired all my CK's sin by accidentally killing an animal with one blow. What a downer.

[CoquetteClochette]

I stole, hunted, and killed monsters until I got 75, then I killed two goblets and the mad scientist. But after getting my sin up to 90 by doing those things (I think you get 5 points of sin for each murder) I couldn't increase it anymore. I was only able to encounter two goblets and then I could only find rats afterwards in the southern dungeon. Am I really unlucky or do you get the 10 remaining points by doing something else?