Questions about trivia cards

[JPL]

I'd like to replay the game at some point and see things like Cogg Island and maybe even go for the "Trivia Lord" achievement, but I'm a little hesitant not knowing exactly how Trivia Cards work, and thus whether a full second run would be assured of finding them all: what determines whether they spawn in a room? Is the total pool of cards tracked across multiple savegames/runs (ie the way achievements are clearly tracked, such that you access them via the main menu not the pause menu from within a specific game session)? If I got a particular trivia question wrong on my first play of the game, will that card show up again on a second run? Do specific cards always show in specific places (ie is there a place I can go to reliably get the Cogg Island card?) Probably a few other things I'd like to know about em but those are the main ones.

Thanks!

If nobody knows, feel free to use this thread to research and speculate!

[Jake]

I don’t know the entirety of how trivia cards work but the rules I know with high confidence are:

* if you get one wrong it goes “back in the deck” to get spawned later. I don’t know if it’s randomly shuffled back in or actually moved to the back. 
* cards are randomly spawned - you don’t always get the card in the same place - but I believe the possible locations in each room are fixed. 

* trivia cards are tracked game-wide, not scoped to a particular save. this means you can’t save scum when you get one wrong but also means you can collect them across multiple playthroughs 

* the fastest way to spawn more trivia cards is to answer them. more specifically, past a certain point the game will stop spawning them if you’re playing with too many unanswered cards in your inventory. so your best choice seems to be to try and answer it right when you get it. 
 

if I’m wrong about any of that I hope to be corrected!

[JJ1]

Because of my own experiences when playing, I think I can add a bit to this.  Jake's final point is a very important one - I ended my first playthrough with about ten cards because I was planning on answering them later.  I started noticing I wasn't getting any new ones and I actually thought that it was only an early game mechanic.  It wasn't until I finished the first playthrough that I realized that I had prevented myself from getting more by not answering them.  So I wanted to get around ninety in my second playthrough to get the achievement of all 100.  And I did.  Even got some wrong the first time I gave an answer and got those cards again in the same playthrough.

 

The ones I got wrong came up again before I had seen some others, so I think it is closer to being randomly shuffled back in than being moved to the back.

 

Because Chapter 4 is so open, it is easier to get the cards and explain what happened in that chapter.  How it seems to work is that when something major happens in the plot, more cards got generated.  Most of the time this was a cutscene, but not every cutscene seemed to cause it to happen.  When additional cards got generated, it didn't seem to happen in the vicinity of where the player was at.  So, being anywhere on Melee Island when it happened meant that there probably weren't going to be any new ones that time on Melee Island.  But the other locations (the other islands, LeChuck's ship, Guybrush's ship) could get them.  Being on one of those other locations for the cutscene meant that Melee Island generally would get some new cards that time, but where the player was located wouldn't get new ones.  So, every time I got a cutscene, I would stop what I was doing and go to all the locations again.  Always found a bunch.  Not in the same general location (example: back alley) or specific location (example: on the ground in front of the door) any time.  But a bunch throughout the world.  My theory is that a player could get more than ninety just in a single playthrough of chapter 4 because there are so many cutscenes.

 

Places that the player would have no further reason to visit can get them.  Card #100 for me was in Wally's ransacked shop.  It was the first and only time I found a card there, despite checking every cutscene.  There were several throughout my playthrough in the governor's mansion and jail, even when there was no reason to go there any longer.  LeChuck's ship was a good source of them for me, even though it just seemed like Apple Bob was putting them there given how the plot proceeded.  The lime trees can get them.  That was always my least favorite part of checking every location.  The outside (trees, etc.) part of the route to Toothrot can get them.  That was my second least favorite part of checking every location because the game eventually starts the player near the gate and then you have to backtrack. 

[BaronGrackle]

Then I suppose I should just guess on these trivia cards asking questions about MI6 parts I haven't gotten to yet. 😐
 

Or I could look them up online. But since they included a Hint Book to prevent me from turning to google, I suppose the better spirit would be to just guess and get them wrong until I reach the later sections of the game.

Edited September 26, 2022 by BaronGrackle

[LowLevel]

15 hours ago, BaronGrackle said:

Then I suppose I should just guess on these trivia cards asking questions about MI6 parts I haven't gotten to yet. 😐

 

You can just skip those cards until you reach the part of the game they refer to. It's highly unlikely that you'll find only/mainly cards referring to future scenes or chapters.

[JacquesSparkyTail]

19 hours ago, Jake said:

I don’t know the entirety of how trivia cards work but the rules I know with high confidence are:

* if you get one wrong it goes “back in the deck” to get spawned later. I don’t know if it’s randomly shuffled back in or actually moved to the back. 
* cards are randomly spawned - you don’t always get the card in the same place - but I believe the possible locations in each room are fixed. 

* trivia cards are tracked game-wide, not scoped to a particular save. this means you can’t save scum when you get one wrong but also means you can collect them across multiple playthroughs 

* the fastest way to spawn more trivia cards is to answer them. more specifically, past a certain point the game will stop spawning them if you’re playing with too many unanswered cards in your inventory. so your best choice seems to be to try and answer it right when you get it. 
 

if I’m wrong about any of that I hope to be corrected!

This is soooo helpful! You have no idea. 

[ThunderPeel2001]

On 9/26/2022 at 1:04 AM, Jake said:

trivia cards are tracked game-wide, not scoped to a particular save. this means you can’t save scum when you get one wrong but also means you can collect them across multiple playthroughs 

 

It seems I'm one of the few people on the planet with the Trivia Overlord achievement (the rarest Steam achievement I own -- pretty crazy). There's an unfortunate bug where starting a new game, and then jumping into a later save, and then back into the new game save. It happened to me twice that all my cards disappeared. So now I have the achievement, but an incomplete Trivia Book (and no idea if anything fancy happens once you get all the cards).

 

I've tried to alert Terrible Toybox, but since I'm the only person complaining about it, it seems nobody is giving it much attention so far 

Edited September 27, 2022 by ThunderPeel2001

[JJ1]

5 hours ago, ThunderPeel2001 said:

So now I have the achievement, but an incomplete Trivia Book (and no idea if anything fancy happens once you get all the cards).

Nothing at all happens.  The 100th correct card is treated just like the 2nd.  I was way more excited than the game was when I got it.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Thanks for letting me know!