Hive Mind

Every other page here is something I wrote down so I would not have to remember it. This is the cabinet that asks whether I did. The questions come out of the same five subjects the rest of the site is made of — Final Fantasy XIV, World of Warcraft, the Pathfinder and Starfinder tables, the block-and-belt builders, and gaming in general — and the clock is always running.

How it goes#

• Pick a pace first. Sprout gives you three answers, twenty seconds and twelve questions; Veteran gives four, fifteen and sixteen; Savage gives five, ten and twenty. The harder paces pay more per question, and they draw the harder questions, so the multiplier is not free money.
• Pick a hive, or take everything. A single subject asks only that subject; Everything shuffles all five together and tells you which one each question came from.
• Answer with `1`–`5`, or click. On a phone, tap the answer.
• Three misses end the round. A wrong answer and a question you let run out cost the same thing, so a guess is always better than the clock.
• Speed and streak are where the score is. A correct answer is worth double if you answer it instantly, and the streak multiplier climbs every third correct answer up to five. Miss once and the streak is back to one — which is why the last question of a long streak is the tense one.
• Two hints a round. `H` or the pill under the question crosses off about half the wrong answers, and halves what that question pays. It does not stop the clock.
• Finishing pays. Reaching the end of the round is worth a bonus for its whole length, and clearing it without a single miss pays that bonus twice.
• Sound is on. `M` or the speaker in the status bar turns it off, and the cabinet remembers. The last five seconds of a question tick.

Posting a run#

Sign in with Discord and the round posts itself the moment it ends; play as a guest and it is kept as a personal best on this device instead. The board keeps each player's best round, so a bad Savage run cannot cost you the standing a good one earned. The arcade page has the longer version of how that works, and the other cabinets.

If a question is wrong#

It happens — a patch moves something, or I mis-remembered it in the first place. Every question carries one right answer and four that are meant to be plainly wrong, so an answer that is arguably also correct is a bug rather than a difficulty setting. Say so in Discord and it comes out of the bank.