Please excuse me if this has been beaten to death, but I care not for browsing the forums to find similar threads.
Simply put, I think there desperately needs to be some sort of function in-game which diminishes the build-up of terror when crossing the zee. Perhaps it is a circumstance, an item, or simply a factor determined by your character’s skills, there really does need to be something that lessens the amount of terror that is gained over time. The current events in place to lower it are too costly (such as shore leave, sleeping at your home, and other such things which cost echoes) or simply don’t offer a practical method of lowering terror. I understand why the terror function exists and I enjoy it thoroughly, but it builds up too quickly. Without any means of tempering terror in the game, it really does discourage exploration and forces you to spend a lot of money that is already difficult to come by.
You just need to learn how to manage your terror. Being in the light will stop you from gaining terror, as will being near land, any land! Even the tiniest island in the zee will do. I played several games before realizing this. Before I did going to Khan’s Heart and back would almost always drive me insane, and now I can make a round trip to Khan’s Heart and return with under 50 terror. The extra fuel will cost much less than the money you’d otherwise spend on terror reduction.
Thank you for your advice, but I have quickly learned these tricks. However, the lack of any items, circumstances, or buffs against terror seems odd considering how it is a core aspect of the game and can easily lead to a game over.
The cheapest way I’ve found of lowering terror is hunting bats close to the lightship north of Hunter’s keep:
Drop anchor close to the lightship (south of it usually works best for me) and wait for the bats. There are 3-4 spawn points nearby, so it’s a pretty useful place.
Once you dispatch the bats, terror is reduced by 1-2 points for tossing the dead bats in the zee. It will cost you some fuel (remember to switch off your light when the lightship’s beam swings towards you to save some more fuel). I dropped 40+ points quite easily in this way.
There are other ways as well; discovering these is part of the fun, I should think.
I don’t really think it needs a cost reduction, but a way of reducing it that doesn’t involve clicking fifty times at wolfstack docks would be nice. (Like it’s ~300 gold to lose 50 terror (which is not a particularly hard amount to make just from port reports), if we could do that in one or two clicks it’d be a lot less annoying.)
Reducing terror is easy and doesn’t cost too much. But an item for reducing terror is a nice idea. There already are several events that reduce terror, but it can’t hurt to add some more.
Maybe a new Quality that makes you more resistant to Terror the longer you have been at Zee like in FL, I mean a Landlubber at the helm of a rusty trampsteamer on his first trip is scared a lot easier than a battlehardened Zeecaptain on a Dreadnought who hunts Lifebergs for fun and profit. Also the option of giving a rousing speech to reduce terror depending on Hearts would be sweet too.
This is one of the primary ways in which I imagined terror being reduced or the meter going down at a diminished rate. If your character has been around for in-game months, it makes sense for the crew and your character themselves to be less terrified.
Terror isn’t that much of a problem, once you get the hang of it -at least up to zones 3 and 4 where I’m currently exploring.
At first, I was going for the straightest route, which is a certain wat of accumulating lots of terror. Once I started sticking closer to land and taking advantage of buoys, things have improved, a lot.
Plus, there are bats aplenty near Hunter’s Keep and a short sail south to Cumaean Canal provides a very fast (albeit somewhat costly) way of getting rid of lots of terror.
I like the idea of experience having a limiting effect on terror, but it would require careful balance; I don’t see how the terrors of the Zee could ever stop having an effect on people, no matter how experienced they are: I mean, I pretty much explored zones 1-3, I have to move to zone 4 and beyond now, and it’s seriously unnerving, that great blackness ahead; and I’m just playing this game, imagine those poor zailors :)
It is, I’d just like to have it before the knives come out, for example if your terror is 52 and you’re zailing into Wolfstack and give a speech to get rid of 3-5 terror so you don’t gain nightmares. Maybe limit it to once per trip to keep us from abusing it.
The resistance could work a lot like the "an experienced Zailor"-Quality in FL, perhaps for each zone a counter how much time you spent there and a slowdown of terror gain depending on it. Plus an effect for terror-cards like the tentacle where as a fresh captain your crewman gets taken but as a veteran you can tell your crew "relax, it’s just your imagination".