I actually had an unpredictable reward earlier that gave me the standard box of curiosities, but displayed a locked option just below it for what looked like a bottle of fermented mare’s milk.
Ok you guys I’m not trying to be too fussy here, but this is surely a bit much:
edited by falsity on 6/24/2013
Haha, thats funny - is it a glitch?
Seems like you ought to head out to Zee or go on a heist. Or get rid of the skull until it lets you into the Cave of the Nadir.
Edit: It’s 4 separate cards that each lower a different stat by 50 CP.
edited by Sara Hysaro on 6/24/2013
It’s not a glitch, those are 4 different cards, one for each major stat. :/
And yeah, I’ve gone to the Pickpocket’s Promenade 'cause it was the easiest option.
OK, so basically that Skull is a Seeker’s dream? Good to know. Makes mental note to sell it if it ever comes into my possession.
The penalties for having a Skull are pretty damn harsh, especially as the skulls themselves really rare, you need one of them for the Cave of the Nadir and you can collect 5 of them to trade them in for a ray-drenched cinder. The cards seem to be fairly common too! And there’s four of 'em.
50CP is an entire level of stat! Not even the menace cards for Seeking are that harsh!
edited by Spacemarine9 on 6/24/2013
Has anyone traded in a Skull yet? Or indeed, five Skulls?
I think the nasty undiscardables are a nice way to encourage us to mix up our play a bit and not get too grindy. Heists are fun, and I’ve never been to Polythreme, and I broke my Tentacle Key…
I’ve got the results for trading in both 1 and 5 skulls, yeah. They’re… pretty OK???
[li]But comparable to Like Rats and Cats. I’m intrigued by the idea of items becoming hazardous, especially since there is an out.
In other news, the Correspondence Stones have new art:
It’s hard enough to get the cards you want at the best of times, adding undiscardable cards with high penalties and frequencies makes it even worse! I mean I guess you can get rid of the cards by ditching their corresponding item, but it’s still kinda weird. I mean, the Scuttering Company are better in almost every way to the Matriarch anyway. The skull, on the other hand, is an item needed to unlock future content, plus there’s an actual reason to hoard them (the Cinder conversion)
I wonder if it’s pointin at a shift in design principles in the future or if Alexis has finally absorbed enough misery to take on his true hell-lich form
edited by Spacemarine9 on 6/24/2013
Uh…you just gonna keep that to yourself or what?
Yes!
no really though i’m not just going to copypaste them straight onto the forum given that it’s new content and all and i’d probably get shot. i can PM it to anyone who wants to know i guess???
Well stop feeling smug and toss me a PM then!
My take on this: so far in Fallen London we’ve had two kinds of choice – narrative choice (side with a Devil or a spirifer; expose the true culprit, or the one with conveniently unimportant friends) and merely tactical choice (grind in Spite or Hunter’s Keep; buy an Exceptional Hat, or save up for a Monocle). Up to now the tactical choices have mostly been rather trivial. A dedicated player could grind enough to buy all the gear and reach a point where all challenges were straightforward. That doesn’t make for interesting gameplay.
I imagine future content will introduce many more situations where gear and character builds have downsides as well as benefits, so that the optimal strategy will no longer be to just hoard lots of everything. I think this is a good thing. But then, if I had my way Correspondence scholars would be shunned by polite society, and Neathy poets would long for a steady commission, and if it were about mushrooms they’d take it and be thankful it wasn’t another jingle about the virtues of Mrs Plenty’s rubbery lumps.
I’ll admit I don’t quite get this either. To me, undiscardable cards like the Cat v. Rat card are saying "You’re playing the game wrong, so you’re going to be punished until you start playing it right."
I can’t say I really understand that for the Cat v. Rat card, but I can at least get the idea of saying that some pets are mutually incompatible and if you want to have both, you’re going to have to pay a price. I’ll quibble with the idea that players should have had any idea as to the punishment waiting for them before spending 400E, but it’s at least comprehensible even if I think the implementation was poor.
I can’t even get that far with the skull.
Having four high-frequency undiscardable cards that eat a level’s worth of a stat go beyond just "You’re playing the game wrong" to "Either start playing the game right or GTFO, and I’m fine either way."
I’m completely lost as to how that makes sense, when the offense is holding on to an item that’s a key to unlocking future content or which is needed to obtain another item.
Eh, it’s Alexis’ game; he just lets us play it. If that’s the direction he wants to go, that’s his call, but I can’t say I understand how this makes for a better game.
Having four high-frequency undiscardable cards that eat a level’s worth of a stat go beyond just "You’re playing the game wrong" to "Either start playing the game right or GTFO, and I’m fine either way."[/quote]
I think you’re taking this a little too personally. That’s not the message this content is sending out unless you take it to be. I’m guessing you’re not a seeker, Tesuji, because it’s a comparable quest: possessing the skull, like seeking, is detrimental to your character, but that doesn’t mean you’re not able to do it. In its simplest form, the cards are a ward from playing the content in exactly the same way all the insanity and betrayal are to Seekers. It’s your decision whether to suffer the consequences and play it, and just because the game doesn’t blatantly tell you to turn back every action like it does for Seekers doesn’t mean it’s any different.
[li]
Flyte’s insight is what you should be listening to, not getting angry that you can’t have everything without ill effects. I too share your desire to have/experience everything at least once, but the simplicity of that might change with some new content and isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
If the cards bother you, either go on a heist or something to be rid of them or just sell/trade in the skull to be rid of your problem and get a new one when the skull-locked content comes out.
edited by Eric Vimes on 6/24/2013
I don’t mind the Skull cards so much, but I really do think they should be one card with four options, rather than four cards with one option. The Mr. Eaten menace cards aren’t nearly as punishing, and the danger of that whole storyline is hyped to hell and back. Having this silly skull be far more dangerous than Seeking Mr. Eaten’s Name kind of undermines the whole idea.
It’s nice there are things people can legitimately worry about. The menaces seem like a bit of a joke.
I have to agree with you here. Menaces can disappear very easily and fast, especially with the new profession layout. This kind of punishment is unique and actually punishing.[li]
These detriments are nowhere near the pain of fully Seeking. True, they’re exaggerated, but a certain part of Seeking is 40x as damaging as the cards and not something you can avoid by going on a short heist.