Anyone else a bit disappointed by Exaltation?

Not with the story elements, they entertain as always, but with the returns. You sacrifice a lot from your next captain when going this route,[spoiler] home, heirlooms, money, stats and scion all gone and all you get is a trinket saying one of your predecessors went east. [spoiler] Unless some interactions are changed with later playthrus that I’ve yet to encounter (not gotten too far with new captain yet due to my frustration at a near total reboot), this seems more a punishment than a victory.

The most rewarding actions story-wise are usually the most damaging. You can know things, or you can stay sane and healthy. You can’t have both.

And this is how it should be.
edited by Olorin on 3/9/2015

And I do not feel that bit of story was sufficient reward for the effort and the soft reset that comes with it. You put as much or more effort into the horizon codex and traveling light stories and get comparable amounts of story, a nifty bonus to future captains, and no penalties. It just seams off.

It’s certainly a rough blow. But I feel like it’s a pretty funny one. If you can muster up the equipment to go east, I feel like you’re in a good shape to get a captain back up and running pretty quickly. Once you get over the misery, you realise a new start is quite fun.

I guess it depends on expectations? It’s mentioned, or implied several times in the course of the ambition that the actions you undertake will cause you to lose everything.


[li]&quotYou must kill nearly all that you are&quot is a pretty. unambiguous bit of flavor text, even without taking the lore association of Kingeater’s Castle into account. I’m more interested in the story myself, and I was pretty much useless the rest of the day after I first played through it, so ymmv. [/li][li]
[/li][li]I kind of wish they’d advertise this ambition more, actually. I would have backed the kickstarter if I had known an experience like this was waiting.
edited by fortluna on 3/10/2015[/li][li]
edited by fortluna on 3/10/2015

I went into it expecting something like Seeking Mr Eaten’s Name and honestly this is hardly punishing compared to that.

That doesn’t really work in single-player does it?

Personally I found Exaltation to be too cryptic while feeling like some big conclusion to Sunless Sea without enough closure.

They didn’t really know SMEN would work in pseudo-multiplayer either before doing it.

I’m thinking about pursuing this with my next captain - can someone clarify if all your other Legacy items disappear as well? I gather that your Ironclad Will, Scion, and Heirlooms get eaten but if you have stat-raising legacy items like the Boke of Sharps and A Dream of Red do those go too?

Personally, I see it as my end-end-game goal. That is, I plan on getting all the other goals first, then it’ll be time to leave the zea - until I can return to visit its belows.

Yeah, you do give up everything. [li]

Just checked, they seems to stay for me. The five legacy remains, everything else nope.

maybe I had an older save? that’s good, though. [li]