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I've been playing Sunless Sea since it went on sale earlier in the week. It's pretty good! My first captain was an idealistic poet who only wanted to travel the underzee to collect stories to write an epic. Unfortunately, he/I thought it was a good idea to try to fight a giant crab and a pirate ship at the same time without reading up on the combat system first.

 

I'm kind of un-enthused about the combat, but the story parts of the game are pretty great. I think Danielle compared it to The Yawgh which I think is pretty close, both in tone and overall style. What you think of the setting, the weird-fiction style, and the tendency to make silly changes like calling the see "the zee" might change how much you enjoy it. So, have other thumbs checked this thing out?

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I'll pull in my post from the relevant episode thread.

 

I decided to buy it anyway, and it seems like it could be really awesome, but it's missing a lot of the niceties that really make it playable for a first time player. For instance, I was given a starting quest in London to go meet with a contact in Mt. Palmerston "somewhere near the home seas." I explored what I thought was the entire available map, because if I ventured any further from the main coast I got nice little pop-ups that this area of the game wasn't finished yet. It turns out the place I needed to go was way past the area that's not completed, out in the middle of the sea where no starting player really would have a hope of getting to, let alone having enough fuel to get back. Even with directions from the forum where to find it, i still never ran into it.

So yeah, great mechanics, but a ton of balancing needed before I'd call it fun.

 

That was written before the STEEL update, which I understand at least filled islands in to a lot of the blank tiles, even if there's nothing to do on those islands at the moment. I'm curious to try the combat revamp, but there's been so much complaining about it I think I'm just going to wait until release at this point.

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I think it's a bit more polished than when you last played, but the navigation still leaves something to be desired. I made it to Mt. Palmerston, but there wasn't a whole lot one the map between there and London, aside from a few small ports. I imagine once the procedural map generation gets going, things will fill in a bit more, but for now it is a bit empty.

 

Still, I've found it kind of enjoyable to sail around the map, going from island to island collecting port reports and generally being a creepy guy who spies on people for the Admiralty. 

 

It also gave me a reason to go back and look at Fallen London, which I haven't played since it was called Echo Bazaar. I kind of like that too, except for the energy system.

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I find Fallen London's energy system much more tolerable since they made it 20 actions instead of 10 (because you'll likely blow up to 6 actions on cards), but yeah, it's an energy system.

 

I haven't actually played much of Sunless Sea, I think because I had the same Mt. Palmerston problem. At this point I think it qualifies as feedback that the first/second quest in the game probably shouldn't be sending you somewhere you have no hope of reaching.

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I didn't actually find it insurmountable, at least in the current build. After making a bit of money collecting port reports from the closest locations and ferrying a set of tomb colonists, I was able to stock up on fuel and supplies, and made the trip without any trouble.

 

The next quest for the same quest-give is a bit more of a problem, though. It similarly told me to go to another place I've never heard of, and just gave me a bunch of money to buy "something" there. I'm tempted to just buy a nice house and try to retire.

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Ah, yeah - I know that quest, and it can be sort of infuriating, because

 

you might well be given a location to go to that you haven't found yet, but also be told not to come back to London without having handed over the money for the item. However, I actually don't think the penalties for failing to complete the mission are actually that severe, and that quest line is not very long, so I think you can just spend the money.

 

The real-time combat is clearly still being balanced, but it's a big improvement on the card-based combat in the pre-Steel versions. Now instead of bumping into enemies to start a fight in a separate window, you have firing arcs and a "heat-up" time in the main game - you need to keep the enemy in your gun's arc for a set time to be able to fire, and for longer to be sure of hitting them.

 

There's also more narrative and quests now, which I think will make the early stages less gruelling - one problem (which the

Blind Bruiser

quest line I suspect was designed to try to offset) is that money is very tight early on without quests, in part because doing regular missions may barely pay for the fuel it costs to get to the relevant island, and some of the enemies can basically one-shot you before you upgrade. I started again in Steel, and have now upgraded to the cargo freighter, have the weapons to go up pretty confidently against most of the sea-beasts, and have basically set up as a haulage and espionage contractor...

 

My tip would probably be

to go for the solider background if you want things to be a little easier - being able to take out pirate pinnaces is a good way to avoid frustration and supplement cash in the early game. And opt to pass on your map when you die - knowing where the first few mission islands are makes life a lot simpler also.

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Do you still not get exploration XP if you keep the same map? That absolutely destroyed my second play-through.

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If memory serves you don't get fragments, but I found that it meant I could do Admiralty missions more effectively, which meant I could afford a better engine and guns and explore further so it kind of worked out, and I got fragments from further places and from dissecting lifebergs.

 

OTOH, I'm currently

using secrets to get Salt's Attention in Whither, then exchanging that for a Searing Enigma at the Salt Lions while picking up basalt to ship back to Wolfstack docks, and selling that to the University

, so I'm grinding money rather than stat improvements.

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What you think of the setting, the weird-fiction style, and the tendency to make silly changes like calling the see "the zee" might change how much you enjoy it.

 

Knowing Failbetter, there's probably a story to the 'z' affectation that's either drawing from history, or is a clue to something terrible in the backstory. I don't recall how they came to that place whether the Song of the Bazaar appears much in Sunless Sea, so there might not be a lot of crossover between London stories and Unterzee stories, but this fragment of writing that documents the adoption of 'zailors' points to Mahogany Hall - which, for an experienced Fallen London player, points through the mirrors to the marshlands beyond. Which is not a good sign.

 

That said, there's plenty of stories in Fallen London that rely on details across the Zee, particularly the far north and south.

 

This setting is weird.

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New storyline in Sunless Sea done by the maker of 80 Days (iOS) - From the Sunless Sea Kickstarter Update:


Here, an invisible tiger stalks and deadly roses grow. Unravel a tale of memory, cruelty and desire, with the King's Claw, the Lady of the Cages, and a mystery from Fallen London's past...

 

A substantial story update to Sunless Sea in the form of a guest island written by Meg Jayanth.

 

Meg Jayanth is a freelance writer and game-maker in London. Her recent work includes 80 Days - a decolonised, steampunk adaptation of Verne's adventure classic, for iOS - and Samsara, a rich historical fantasy of dream-walking and intrigue set in Eighteenth Century Bengal, which lives on our own StoryNexus.

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So, Diamond update is out which makes the map "basically complete" as per the road map, so I'm thinking about giving this another try and hoping to not get stuck in the middle of nowhere this time. Anyone else been playing recently?

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It comes out for real in February, so maybe that's a good time to check it out. They added an actual main story.

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Theoretically this should be officially released today. If it follows normal Steam procedure, it'll be in a little over six hours. I'm looking forward to finally trying it out, as I'm being very stingy with Early Access games these days.

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It got 10/10 on Eurogamer. The review and the steam impressions made me buy it, it just seems very unique to not even give it a chance. Hope I won't be disappointed.

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I enjoyed what I played of it, but the incomplete bits really got in my way so I decided to wait until release. I haven't played with the new combat system, but it sounds like it's a lot closer to what I was expecting (naval combat with firing arcs) then before so that sounds pretty cool.

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I stopped playing this (right after the combat rework into the naval firing arcs, which was a welcome change) early so I could enjoy the story fresh when it released. I think it'll live up to its promises, and Failbetter has still promised to put in the "Zumbarine" section, so they'll continue to work on it.

 

The new trailer on Steam is good stuff - I hope they put the inclusion of Zailor quotes  appearing/fading around your ship into the game, it's much better than having (read: forgetting) to glance at the event text box in the lower left corner of your screen.

 

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:tup:

 

They've fixed a lot of the balance issues and every time I thought I'd hit a doldrums, something else has come up to do. I've retired my first captain and passed on a beefy deck gun and a zea-side mansion to my daughter.

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I've put maybe fifteen hours into it since the release build. I like it a lot, especially just the meditative act of sailing, but I'm having a lot of problems with quests either breaking or having non-apparent "incorrect" answers that lock you off entirely from further content. It bums me out a little that I've got a great run going, but I'll never make any progress in Khan's Shadow or with the Haunted Doctor because something happened, I'm not sure if it was a bug or just the wrong choice, to make both those objects non-interactable. If I make a certain choice, something ought to come of it, good or bad. Putting up a big wall of "nope" for me to remember to avoid in my next life is not good.

 

I'm also a bit miffed at the decision to make only a handful of cargo runs profitable in any appreciable way, although I'd be much more willing to accept the reasoning of a design decision here. I can sail all the way down to Port Carnelian and buy thirty sapphires to bring back to Fallen London, but that'll only make me forty echoes, which is barely the cost of fuel. On the other hand, I can run Sphinxstone or Clay Men for huge profit, even though they're about equidistant from Fallen London. The loading screens warn me that running cargo is intentionally made to be unprofitable, but apparently only most of the time, with certain items.

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I've put maybe fifteen hours into it since the release build. I like it a lot, especially just the meditative act of sailing, but I'm having a lot of problems with quests either breaking or having non-apparent "incorrect" answers that lock you off entirely from further content. It bums me out a little that I've got a great run going, but I'll never make any progress in Khan's Shadow or with the Haunted Doctor because something happened, I'm not sure if it was a bug or just the wrong choice, to make both those objects non-interactable. If I make a certain choice, something ought to come of it, good or bad. Putting up a big wall of "nope" for me to remember to avoid in my next life is not good.

 

There are some quests that you can definitely mess up by doing The Wrong Thing, and on the one hand it's a bummer to have happen, but I've been enjoying the knowledge that I can mess up, the feeling of consequences is good. Some of the quests also have hidden depths, where you'll only get a particular shiny, or make progress if you take a specific path you have no way of knowing in advance. It's neat to stumble into these things, but it's really aggravating to be unable to experience content you're trying to experience because you didn't luck into the right solution. All I want is to do stuff with the Dawn Machine, why won't you let me, game?

 

Minor spoiler (specifics redacted) for the Curator's colours quest:

AAAARGH, the goddamn Violant. After naturally finding all the other colours, I finally spoiled myself on how to get Violant. Turns out the only way is a very rare (I had to camp the harbour for about three dozen events) random event in [REDACTED]. There's no way to know that's what you need to be doing, and barring some exceptional luck, you won't find it naturally.

 

I'm also a bit miffed at the decision to make only a handful of cargo runs profitable in any appreciable way, although I'd be much more willing to accept the reasoning of a design decision here. I can sail all the way down to Port Carnelian and buy thirty sapphires to bring back to Fallen London, but that'll only make me forty echoes, which is barely the cost of fuel. On the other hand, I can run Sphinxstone or Clay Men for huge profit, even though they're about equidistant from Fallen London. The loading screens warn me that running cargo is intentionally made to be unprofitable, but apparently only most of the time, with certain items.

 

Sphinxstone and Clay Men are both quests (Sphinxstone will actually lead to some plot if you do it enough, and clay men... sometimes do things), as opposed to just buying some cargo from a shop because you think it'll be profitable to run, which I think is the intended distinction.I think the game is trying to push you to do quests and experience content, rather than grinding for cash. That also fits in with the Port Reports, which can mostly cover your travel expenses if you go to a lot of places before returning home. Once you've got a lot mapped, I think you can net profit by pursuing the Admiralty's requested ports. Note: Turns out if you hang on to two of the item you get from visiting the Admiralty's requested port, you can combine those items together into a better one you'll want to turn in instead. You have to click on it in your hold, which I never thought to do.

 

If you really have your heart set on grinding, there's an island that's suited to sitting in harbour earning tons of echoes per "Events await you", but I'd advise against it because it's really not necessary and feels kinda cheaty. My first two captains died quickly, my third retired early, and my fourth's been exploring the Unterzee for dozens of hours now, without any financial woes, and the only thing I got in carryover was a nice 1500 echo gun.

 

I've discovered a blog run by someone who seems to know everything about the game (both lore and mechanics), so if you're confused or curious about a particular thing, send an ask here and they'll answer.

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I think there's some bugs with some of the carry-over stuff from one character to the next. I had a Scion, so I got to pick two legacies. I picked Rival and Shipmate, which should give me 50% of the deceased captain's iron and hearts, as well as a gun and a crew member. Since my first captain was a military man, I have 50 base iron, plus I improved it several times with secrets during the game, yet I only ended up with 36 iron with my next character. Similarly, my hears was only a couple higher than the default. Finally the gun I brought across morphed into the default starting weapon, but now the 500 echo gun listed in the store has crappy stats that match the starter weapon so now only the 200 echo gun is worth anything.

 

Edit: Also the wiki is in incredible disrepair, with information that's several builds outdated.

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There are some quests that you can definitely mess up by doing The Wrong Thing, and on the one hand it's a bummer to have happen, but I've been enjoying the knowledge that I can mess up, the feeling of consequences is good. Some of the quests also have hidden depths, where you'll only get a particular shiny, or make progress if you take a specific path you have no way of knowing in advance. It's neat to stumble into these things, but it's really aggravating to be unable to experience content you're trying to experience because you didn't luck into the right solution. All I want is to do stuff with the Dawn Machine, why won't you let me, game?

 

Yeah, I understand the basic impulse for there to be a "wrong" decision in order for there to be some tension and for there to be something to experience the next time around, but more often than not it feels misguided because i) a decent run is going to be hours in length, so I have no faith that I'll be able to remember whether it's the right hand or the left hand that cuts the quest off short, and ii) a lot of the breaking points come incredibly early, look perfectly reasonable, and cut off hours-long quests, like if you ever make the mistake of asking the Haunted Doctor about his past. Fallen London didn't have half so many blind alleys as Sunless Sea, but hopefully they'll be fleshing out the latter to be more like the former. Still, as it is, it makes me want to find a wiki for every major decision, since the choice is secretly so often between something and nothing.

 

And eh, I get the impulse to discourage cargo hauling, but it feels unthematic for a sailing game if you don't have to think at all about which port to take salvaged or stolen goods to, not to mention that good design of a cargo economy could be just as much of an incentive to explore as the quests themselves. If their goal is to discourage people from hellish grinding, they've failed, because there's already at least five guides up on the Steam Community page about how to put yourself through five or six hours of hell hauling sphinxstone back and forth and then using the five figures you make there to fill mirrorcatches which'll break six figures. If there is any way for an obsessive and joyless individual to make money in a game, it'll be abused, so I'm a bit nonplussed why cargo prices aren't more varied just to help the average player make a bit of money on the side.

 

Just to reiterate, I like this game a lot. I'm mostly just frustrated when the instincts I garnered from hundreds of hours of Sid Meier's Pirates! actively hurt me in Sunless Sea.

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I think there's some bugs with some of the carry-over stuff from one character to the next. I had a Scion, so I got to pick two legacies. I picked Rival and Shipmate, which should give me 50% of the deceased captain's iron and hearts, as well as a gun and a crew member. Since my first captain was a military man, I have 50 base iron, plus I improved it several times with secrets during the game, yet I only ended up with 36 iron with my next character. Similarly, my hears was only a couple higher than the default.

 

That part is working as intended, it's just really badly explained. You don't keep 50% of your stats, rather you keep 50% of your permanent stat increases. If your captain started with 25 hearts and 50 Iron, equipped an officer with +6 iron and +3 hearts, spent secrets to level up Hearts by 10 and Iron by 10, and had a random event that gave them Iron +2, you would get 50% of +10 hearts, and 50% of +12 iron, for 5 and 6 respectively.

 

a lot of the breaking points come incredibly early, look perfectly reasonable, and cut off hours-long quests, like if you ever make the mistake of asking the Haunted Doctor about his past.

 

Eesh, I didn't know about that. All the dead ends I ran into were slightly more reasonable. I'd click on an event that takes me to another event where I can't back out, and I'm forced to make a Veils check, with only 29 Veils, so I fail and get some sort of bad end for the quest. It feels a lot more fair than the Haunted Doctor sounds.

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I've discovered a blog run by someone who seems to know everything about the game (both lore and mechanics), so if you're confused or curious about a particular thing, send an ask here and they'll answer.

 

That's Spacemarine - not only does he have a frighteningly comprehensive understanding of Fallen London, he's also the person who used a particular card in Fallen London to send the developers thousands and thousands of dead rats. There's occasional references in Sunless Sea to rat sending and rat infestations which almost all draw from that prank.

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So I finally ended a 30+ hour campaign (all of which occured over just a few days) by sailing NORTH and wow, maybe I was just in the right mood to finish, but the ending felt amazing. It helps that I played Echo Bazaar, and NORTH was always one my primary obsessions. I think I'll stop playing for a bit, not because I've seen all the content, but just to let the ending sit.

 

Semi-tangent: I love the cohesiveness of the lore in Echo Bazaar and Sunless Sea. In a lot of games, it feels like there is not more lore than is shown to the audience, the universe only exists to the extent that it had to be put on screen in front of the players. For instance, I'd bet money that Valve doesn't have a much better idea of who the G-Man is than we do (not that that's an inherently bad approach to storytelling, the G-Man is great). With Failbetter though, I get the constant feeling that they have a ten thousand page lore bible somewhere, in which resides the answer to every question raised by the setting, and I love that.

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Apparently they did actually make a lore bible when they started but it's clear it's expanded - there are waves of content added later in Fallen London that introduce concepts that clearly weren't thought of before, like the hymn of the Bazaar. But they're really good at writing stories that feel like you're just getting a snippet of something larger, of choosing ways to talk about things that have resonance. Also Failbetter's writing staff are super well-read and they're drawing from sources that most other games writers are drawing from third or fourth hand.

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