The ID rule

Sometimes when playing online, Journey looks different or is in a different state for each player, see Offsync.

Some of these differences follow the ID rule.

Introduction
The ID rule


 * determines the differences between such things as what each Companion sees, or what their characters do during cinematics, automatic walks, etc.
 * based on players name or platform ID
 * important to know about, If one wants to create Glitches for a Companion, or understand when something they see is invisible to their Companion. Example: catch a WM for your Companion.

There are many things, that do not look the same for each player, but not all are affected by the ID Rule.

Example: Shooting Stars in Sunken City do not appear at the same time for the players, though it does not matter who is host or client.

Those general "game looks different" things could be collected at Offsync.

The logic behind it
While the exact reasons for the ID rule are not known, many players suggest it is because connections between Companions in Journey are peer to peer.

This means that both Companions are connected to one of the servers for their platform (PSN if on PS, Epic Game's servers if on Epic, ...) until the moment of connection.

When they do connect, one becomes "host" and one "client":

What is my ID?
Your ID can be different to your username.

Steam
The 17 digits Steam-ID determines who is LID and HID.

"On steam, the ID relationship will be defined by account number, not by the account name. The older account is host and younger account is guest."

"According to pipim, the Host/Client ID rule is determined by your Steam ID number and can not be changed."

Epic Games
Needs tests to find out if changing the user name has an effect on IDs.

You can change your Epic username every 2 weeks.

PlayStation
The PSN tag is the ID.

How to change PSN ID:

PS4 online https://www.playstation.com/en-us/support/account/change-psn-online-id/

iOS
If the Game Center name is also the name thats relevant for the ID-Rule is unknown to the Wiki.

How names are sorted
This will be important, when trying to give glitches to random players or trying out things on an arranged Journey. If one wants to be glitch giver, should choose a name/ID thats at the end of the Unicode list. Some players choose names that start with several z.

___

NAHARIE what about

A is higher then Z

same with list below, just say "Symbols are on top of the list, high IDs. Numbers come after that.."

___

The logic behind the name sorting is actually quite simple:

Names are sorted according to reverse Unicode numbering.

However, this is usually not necessary as there are various other in game methods of determining which Companion is the host.

Most of the time what this means is alphabetical order:


 * Symbols > numbers > uppercase letters > lowercase letters
 * A > Z
 * Z > a
 * a > z
 * If the name contains non Latin characters, one can refer to a chart of all characters (such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unicode_characters) and compare the names character by character.

A few examples:
 * B must help A
 * a must help A
 * Ab must help Aa
 * Aa must help AA
 * #@ must help 32

Differences that companions experience in each level
Note that not only is this list not exhaustive, but that not all graphical differences between what companions see are caused by the ID rule.

Some such as the Dirty robe trick are caused by the by each player themselves, while the reasons behind others, such as the Zimcloak are not known.

As well as being useful for knowing who will see what, these differences can be used to identify the host during a game before both companions' names are shown. Knowing, for instance, that the host (LID) will always be on the left when entering the PD and the client (HID) on the right, provides an easy way to very early on identify who is who.

Naked Companion/Naked Wayfarer
Under certain circumstances one companion's robe can, for the other companion, vanish completely. While it is very unlikely, it is not impossible for the first companion's client to glitch and also show them as missing their robe. However, usually only one side can see the glitch, and the other has no idea as it appears perfectly normal to them. For further details see Naked Wayfarer.

Credits
The basic information on this page cames from the original posts by aravshetikolava and rebi.