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Citizen Sleeper is one of the many ‘sleeper’ indie hits to come out this year. It perfectly melds resource management, investigation, character development, RPG elements, and fantastic dialogue to deliver an unforgettable experience. ‘Indie darling’ doesn’t come close to adequately describing it.

Related: Things We Wish We Knew Before Starting Citizen Sleeper

One of the more interesting aspects of the game is resource management and allocation gameplay systems. This can take the form of currency, salvage, and other assorted items and data fragments. The biggest, however, is the game’s reliance on dice. If you want to succeed in Citizen Sleeper, you need to wrap your bonce around these ever-changing numerical prisms.

What Are Dice?

Citizen Sleeper review 1

Dice in Citizen Sleeper represent an action. More so, they represent how effective any action you perform will be. Your dice pool will determine how effective you are at any given moment, and based on the number on your dice, your success rates will vary.

A Neutral result is still a success!

Die Number

Effect

1-2

50% Neutral / 50% Negative

3-4

25% Positive / 50% Neutral / 25% Negative

5

50% Positive / 50% Neutral

6

100% Positive

In short, the lower the dice number, the less reliable it will be when used. That doesn’t mean they are useless, however, and there are plenty of reasons to keep low dice numbers around.

Using Your Dice

Repairing A Ship In Citizen Sleeper

You can use your dice to complete all kinds of tasks, objectives, and jobs in Citizen Sleeper. Navigating the map and interacting with different nodes will reveal various tasks you can complete. These could be manual labor, engineering, or even working the stock market. Whatever you choose to do, your dice will always perform in the same way.

Saving your best dice for tasks you need doing, is always a good idea. You could also save those dice to tackle more dangerous tasks. Some tasks may be risky, and therefore, could lead to damage. This is not what you want to happen, so avoid dropping your lower-value dice on these dangerous objectives.

Don’t forget that you can also travel through cyberspace and interact with various nodes there too. These will usually require very specific dice numbers to succeed, and this is where you want to dump your lower value dice.

Getting More Dice

Citizen Sleeper Empty Container

Getting dice is simple - go to bed. This will restock your dice supply, randomly generating each one. You can’t rely on RNG to always roll in your favor, so making use of the powerful dice when you can, whilst making the most of your weaker dice when forced, is all part of the game’s flow.

One thing to note is that your dice pool is capped at five from the get-go. As your condition worsens over time, the number of dice you will generate will fall. Basically, as your body wears down, you can perform fewer actions. Managing your condition and staying healthy is key if you want to make the most out of your days.

Be aware that recovering your Condition is very expensive, so sometimes operating with only three or four dice may be required. Heck, it may be preferable.

Modifying You Dice

Citizen Sleeper Machinist Class

Your dice are powerful tools, but they can be made better. Each Sleeper in Citizen Sleeper comes with skills they are proficient and weak in. These will apply modifiers to your dice and can make weak dice much more powerful.

When you start the game, most of your modifiers will be at zero, however, you will have one at +1, and one at -0. As you complete missions in Citizen Sleeper, you will be able to unlock new skills and improve your modifiers. At the start of the game, however, it’s advised that you try to stick to your Sleeper’s strengths. This is especially true if you have some high dice rolls as you don’t necessarily want to slot a six into a task you have bonus modifiers for - it’s kind of a waste.

Next: Citizen Sleeper: Beginner Tips