Yes, you lose an entire starting blueprint roll at P16, in effect you can't really form any meaningful tech except for simple one like skewers/coal and such. that's part of the challenge, and this made finish early order very important

Very helpful, thank you. I find myself referring to this guide often as I painfully climb he prestige ladder (currently on prestige 7).

A question about the prestige 16 change. I fear it means a complete loss of a blueprint choice, which is pretty tough. Might I be reading this too harshly? Is the blueprint choice eliminated entirely, or just shifted to later along the reputation track? A temporary delay in getting a blueprint seems less of hit than a total loss of one blueprint.

For me, moving to the prestige levels felt easier at first because the shift to a reputation requirement of eighteen (prestige 1) also gave, net, one additional blueprint choice along the extended reputation track. The extra reputation required to end was described, but the extra blueprint choice was not.

Yes, I am strong advocate on getting P19 changed, but it seems the devs think this is fine.

I'm still in the early prestiges atm but I do like how so far the difficulties (even before the prestiges) mostly just add an extra plate to spin, so it really does feel like a slow burn and every stage just feels a LITTLE harder than the last.

6, 8, 14, 15, 17, and 19 all look super harsh though (though I assume by the time I reach 17, after dealing with 6 for 11 prestiges I'll probably struggle with food less).

I'm playing on Pioneer and having a rough go of it :s

IMO most of them are annoying but the worst offender is P19: 5 amber per glade or you lose 2 villagers. Not only it make the meta extremely conservative and stale, they are simply annoying to play with.

Aw dammit. I'm at 8 and already have somewhat of a bad time.
12, 13, 14, 16, 20 seem very brutal.