I begin to reach the end of my ambition, and I’m questioning what treasure to choose. I’m also wondering whether it might be worth it to spend a bit hopping ambitions and getting all the unique items I can from each route BEFORE redoing my ambition and choosing a treasure.
I was hoping people might have advice on 1) whether the ambition items before a treasure are worth the ~120 fate and months of work, and 2) which treasure for Heart’s Desire is most useful. There’s a couple of them I could immediately see myself picking in character, but if they’re useless I could easily pick one of the others, you know?
Lethean Tea-Leaves are supposed to remove all Ambition-related items, including secondary rewards. Now I’m not sure how thoroughly that’s been tested, but in theory at least you shouldn’t retain anything of value.
Choose Power unlocks what is by FAR the most unique dialogue and lore options for any Ambition reward. I say this as someone who leashed a Vake-Steed instead: If your priority is simply new narrative content, Choose Power is by far the best option even compared to the other Hearts rewards.
As for which is the worst Heart’s Desire reward, while subjective biases will be what they are-Escape is helpful if you enjoy mucking around in certain Railway grinds, or in your lab, Time has probably the least grind-applicable options unlocked, but it IS a narratively significant feat that comes with what is greatly improved vitality among other things. And Love sucks, is the worst, is both ultimately undeliverable by the Masters and replaced by something far shallower and gaudier, although you might have figured this given the Masters’ track record at arranging it for others.
You get a lot of small lore snippets as Mr Cards. None of them is particularly profitable or groundbreaking in lore.
As far as stats go Red Science is not too useful. IIRC it plays significant role exactly in zero top endgame grinds. Persuasive and Watchful are also easier to get than D and S. But game is regularly updated. Who knows, maybe half a year from now RS will be the boom of the season.
In terms of lore and roleplaying… By this point you are probably well aware what a sorry and miserable bunch Master are. Do you really want to become a lesser member of them? Another note, all Neathly people have trouble returning to surface or traveling wider universe. But becoming a Master is much bigger transgression against the Chain. So for the forseeable future you are either confined to Neath, or should push for honorable path of Liberation. Think about it.
Whatever you choose remember one thing. All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.
To be perfectly fair, for those of us that know more about who exactly is sponsoring “the honourable path of Liberation” the truth of the matter is that a creepy space plant, a heretical Fingerking and a tyrannical Judgement-turned-black hole eyeball who hasn’t changed as much as it thinks it has are the ones pulling all the strings behind the scene. And out of all the major powers affiliated with LIberation the freaking Spider-Senate is by far the most honourable of them all. Behind the facade of liberty, equality and fraternity lies a less organised but no less ruthless pyramid scheme.
Within Fallen London at least, it’s hard to argue that becoming even a lesser Master affords you far greater power than even most royalty can imagine. As for leaving to the surface-Apples’ special brew may be able to fix that, and logically as a Master you’d have better access to Apples’ stocks than any mere mortal. At least for as long as a swallow lasts before it gets flushed out through your system.
Do NOT! Don’t pick an ending for the reward. Pick and ending that is suitable for your character or for you.
Ambition items were relevant when they were first finished because there were some unbalanced grinds. Even if some rewards are appealing, you will notice that free items for advanced stats* are constantly added while end-game grinds are replaced/added/tweaked. As an example, HG grind doesn’t care if you win or not; the EPA is the same.
Can definitely second this. Fallen London is story-based, after all, so I’d advise going with your gut and picking whichever ending is most narratively satisfying to you.