Soo… I "only" played for about a day now, but I am kind of disappointed by this game:
So far I have only been able to sustain myself by travelling to Venderbright and back. The trip seems to pay for itself, and I gain a little, if I encounter pirates on the way. As soon as I travel in other directions, I have to avoid enemies, because they all seem stronger than me. I do get some money from the admiral, but it doesnt nearly cover the travel costs (admittedly, it did for the visit to Station III, but it seems to be an exception). I could just go on ferrying Tomb Colonists to Venderbright until I have stronger weapons, but it just seems incredibly boring to do so, because it is always the same. Most of the forum threads I found seem to suggest similar ways to gain a little money.
I thought a game like this would be about making decisions and not about doing the same thing over and over…? Did I misunderstand that or is it only because the game isnt finished yet?
[li]they are still building and balancing, and a lot more is waiting in the wings to come.
[li]the idea is that you’re supposed to run circuits around the zee, hitting as many ports as possible on the way.
[li]kill what can be killed, gather reports everywhere, and pursue any mission that presents itself.
[li]going to Vender & back won’t cut it - you’ll need to range much further afield and return to London only when out of gas.
[li]
[li]that said, the margins are still thin on long runs and it takes a lot of real-world time to build bank and ‘get good’.
[li]the quick route to profits (and deep game exploration) lies in the harvest of riddles and beach barbeques.
[li]
save as soon as you enter port and explore the city.
[li]get a riddle or food event? pick the hardest one you can.
[li]reload & try again if (when) you fail; you’ll get there eventually.
[li]you get a ‘captivating treasure’ on riddles, worth 1,000 at the university, or for a Tyrant’s Treat, you get stat boosts equal to a grand.
[li]this will bank a grand per trip on average (but mind that you need a grand to breed a grand).
[li]
[li]eventually, missions will appear that offer a nice slice of pie, but they can be sporadic.
[li]those are still being built into the game.[/li][li] edited by Psst! on 8/3/2014
[li]
The basis of sunless sea is exploration so what I say to you sir is to explore and have fun. You can go pretty far without worrying about too high level monsters. What I suggest for you is to stop by at Hunters Keep and play that story as it is fruitful and intriguing ( as well as a bit creepy)
If you have any special crew like the haunted doctor or the genial magician play their stories as they can die and you can lose their cool story options.
If you want money I suggest also going down to the channels where the zea goes into the surface ( it’s directly south of london just keep going until you hit it) their you will get a secret from the game or something like that which you can trade to the admiral.
Also go to the salt lions which are like directly across from london past the Orange line (their pretty far) and get their special trade item ( can’t remember what sorry) which sells welll in London.
This is how I started by shipping and trading until I got better stuff. Also warning try to avoid going past the tomb colonies until your well equipped and as well as past the iron republic ( farther south than the channels I previously mentioned)
Most of all just EXPLORE and dying is only part of the fun you seek of, tho is so cliche but you learn from past mistakes it’s true you get to go back and do it all over again or if your playing merciful you don’t have to worry about dying just save before leaving each port[/li][li] edited by hyperion122 on 8/4/2014
Ohhhhh I just thought I didn’t get far enough, good to know so I kept him around from my legacy for nothing. Just goes to show failures help you learn edited by hyperion122 on 8/4/2014
I must say, that Im not a huge fan of trial and reload. It kind of makes decisions pointless, because you can always undo them. As for those big circuit runs, as I said, I have to avoid most of the enemies. The events on far away islands seem to be for later on too. Salt lions are too expensive. As is going to the surface.
Also, i was at Hunters Keep very often. It keeps buring down.
Hunt the lifebergs then. Easy enough beasties with good payout which you probably should know about since you have been reading the forums.That or the Godfall wine route in early game.
By trial and reload I didn’t mean to die and restart all stories to turn out the way you want I meant that you learn more and more and survive longer by exploring and eventually dying[li]
And anyway I think besides stories like the destruction of hunters keep which you are basically guaranteed to go through, I think the story options are randomized so it’s different every time and it also still is in the works so theirs a lot more to come. Also how are the salt lions too expensive is the amount of fuel spend to get their not equal to the reward edited by hyperion122 on 8/4/2014
I can only reiterate what others have said - be daring, explore, get to know how the game works. There are highly rewarding stories out there, but you’ll never find them by sticking close to London. Don’t worry too much about losing your first few characters - you won’t lose anything you can’t earn again, with interest, in a future playthrough. And, if worst comes to worst, you can always run away.
The very system of death and legacy implemented in the game points at a trial and error (more than trial and reload) game. My first two runs were horrid but every time I learned a bit more and I got better, understanding more and more how to balance the managing of resources (fuel, supplies, skills, crew, hull…) with the -essential- exploration of the Zee (which also means knowing what the various locations can give you).
Now it’s quite some time I don’t have a money problem.
[quote=nyrk]I must say, that Im not a huge fan of trial and reload. It kind of makes decisions pointless, because you can always undo them. As for those big circuit runs, as I said, I have to avoid most of the enemies. The events on far away islands seem to be for later on too. Salt lions are too expensive. As is going to the surface.
Also, i was at Hunters Keep very often. It keeps burning down.[/quote]
Just came here to tell you that youcan’t have fun playing this game. As a matter of fact, you can’t enjoy games at all. Might as well quit playing games forever. You don’t get to make any decisions in this game. Rather, you just do the same route for 40 hours, until your brain has melted.
WRONG! Even with what little they had before the Emerald patch there were 3 distinct ways of easily increasing profit that could be mixed and matched. It might be slightly more difficult now that Map Shuffling has been implemented. But on the other hand, they will only implement more ways of making money. If you can’t find a profit margin, you are doing it wrong. Maybe you need a better map, maybe you need to explore more, maybe you need to stay away from mt Nomad until you’re way stronger, you silly. It’s a shame that you’re not enjoying the game though, hopefully a more daring and smarter strategy will induce some more fun in your play.
I suppose any game is what you make of it. I’m still enjoying it and have been playing since early Beta. Though if you don’t find Sunless Sea fun maybe it is just not the game for you but I do hope you carry on playing and exploring the wonderful world that Failbetter have created
Starting a fresh game can be frustrating, you need money to make money and, unless you are lucky, that can be a bit of a grind. But the more you play the more you learn and eventually you will be out exploring, fighting beasties and making profit.
My tips for early game are to keep fairly close to London until you have a full crew and some harpoons.
Use the coast and lights to keep terror as low as possible.
Use you Zee-bat when you get to the edge of the areas you have discovered.
Don’t complete the Blind Bruiser’s first commission until you have an idea of where most places are, you don’t know where he will send you and some places are harder to reach than others.
The Admiral is more patient and his commissions give you an incentive to explore the map, though with map shuffling I wouldn’t trust his directions.
Bats might be boring to fight but you get terror reduction or supplies and that can be very useful when you are low on money.
Fighting Lifebergs is fairly easy once you realise that they can’t help you if you are more than 40 yards away, so use flee a lot and you will eventually defeat them without any damage.
Even in a starter ship you are fast enough to get away from the killers like Mount Nomad and Lorn Flukes.
I don’t know how the financial model of Fallen London works but I would hazard a guess that it’s quite different from the more mainstream distribution model that Sunless Sea is clearly intending to rely on. I hope that the developpers are not relying on the heavy enfranchisement of FL players to make SS succeed.
I really like this game and feel it has a lot of potential and despite many many frustrations I am taking it at face value that this is an “early-access version” and things will get better. Because if they don’t then the kind of posts I keep seeing on these forums make me suspect the game won’t do very well commercially.
Lots of posters here are clearly very passionate, enfranchised and invested. Which is great. But most players will not suffer this much frustration in the early game. Early game is intended to hook and draw in a new player in and no amount of comments along the lines of “this game rewards trial and error” and “you have to be daring” is likely to change that. While all of these features are what makes SS what it is, the early game must be an exception if it’s to succeed commercially longer term. Not only does there need to be more things to do and ways to earn Echos (which I believe will be the case in the full release) but there needs to be a lot more sign-posting and hand-holding very early on (I am emphasize the “very” to pre-empt indignant response from those who think there are plenty of easy ways to start)
[quote=genesis]I don’t know how the financial model of Fallen London works but I would hazard a guess that it’s quite different from the more mainstream distribution model that Sunless Sea is clearly intending to rely on. I hope that the developpers are not relying on the heavy enfranchisement of FL players to make SS succeed.
I really like this game and feel it has a lot of potential and despite many many frustrations I am taking it at face value that this is an "early-access version" and things will get better. Because if they don’t then the kind of posts I keep seeing on these forums make me suspect the game won’t do very well commercially.
Lots of posters here are clearly very passionate, enfranchised and invested. Which is great. But most players will not suffer this much frustration in the early game. Early game is intended to hook and draw in a new player in and no amount of comments along the lines of "this game rewards trial and error" and "you have to be daring" is likely to change that. While all of these features are what makes SS what it is, the early game must be an exception if it’s to succeed commercially longer term. Not only does there need to be more things to do and ways to earn Echos (which I believe will be the case in the full release) but there needs to be a lot more sign-posting and hand-holding very early on (I am emphasize the "very" to pre-empt indignant response from those who think there are plenty of easy ways to start)[/quote]
I’m sorry but I don’t understand (or, dare I say, accept) this reasoning. If you want a game that takes you by hand for every minimum step and guides through obstacles 10 cm high, perhaps you should go to Facebook and play Zynga games - with all the possible respect for Zynga. (I’m speaking to a generic "you", not to "you genesis")
Sunless Sea is not such an impossibly difficult game that makes you rage in frustration for hours. It’s a moderately difficult game with some things that you have to learn how to manage (terror first of all, then fuel) before being really successful, but if you do not have the patience to spend 2-3 hours to do it, perhaps it’s not the game for you. Also because you should have been captured by the setting and the atmosphere by then.
I would say that learning how to deal with the first obstacles is an integral part of the game (of any game, IMO). I really really hope there is not much more sign-posting or hand-holding than there is now. And I’m saying it not as a FL aficionado, but as a gamer.
I have only played the game for a couple of hours, but right now the problem with the advise "Just go out an explore!" is that it feels like the game punishes you for doing that. And if you don’t go out it feels like you’re not getting anywhere since the profit margins are so small that it turns into an endless grind to get to the point where you actually can explore.[li]
I have never managed to explore beyond the harbors that lie both north and south of London on the coast without getting killed, usually by an enemy that killed me in one hit. And since the map changes every time you die, it doesn’t even gain you anything to explore, since you’ll start at zero again.
Now, I’m fine with investing some time to get a feel for how the game works, because I love the setting just that much. But it’s still frustrating and I would expect that goes for people who are not already invested in the fallen london world even more.
Well, to be honest I have no idea. I dont have 200 echoes to spend to start the event there. The most profitable event up to now was finding Station III and getting 100 echoes from the admiral.
I do get that i should be exploring, but I cant go much further than Venderbright and maybe Godfall, because I run out of resources. And Godfall is usually taking so many resources that I die from terror on the way back or run out of fuel afterwards. If I just go explore into random directions, I usually die rather soon, because I dont find anything profitable and have little to no money when I get back to London.
I really like the setting of the game, so I will probably play on a little, but it looks like I should really wait for the finished game.
Let’s keep it civil, folks - we’re all friends here.
(My take: early game could use a little more tutorialising, but seeing as the mechanics, the story and the map are all incomplete, it’s not necessarily practical to implement a very complete tutorial at this time - it would just have to be rewritten, probably more than once, as the game changed.)
[quote=Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook]Let’s keep it civil, folks - we’re all friends here.
(My take: early game could use a little more tutorialising, but seeing as the mechanics, the story and the map are all incomplete, it’s not necessarily practical to implement a very complete tutorial at this time - it would just have to be rewritten, probably more than once, as the game changed.)[/quote]
Absolutely. That is my hope and if that is true then I think most of my concerns could be put to rest. I only find it surprising that, given how the developers have set out a very detailed roadmap, additional "tutorialising" (love the word!) has not been mentioned at any point.
Well, the roadmap is laid out in -very- broad terms, and mostly refers to chunks of the map being inserted, or major mechanics like neutral vessels. There’s a huge amount of content that we know will be included, 'cause it’s already placeholdered - officer stories, dungeons, additional ambitions, etc. - that aren’t mentioned in the roadmap. FBG have acknowledge that early-game direction is an issue and will most certainly be dealing with it as time goes on.