Not sure how I feel about the Tribute and Zaling patch notes. I’m not that dependent on the tribute grind at this point (especially after the Rat Market changes) but I still cashed out the Sixth Coil on mountain-sherds so I guess I have to hope the transfer rate holds up long enough.
The changes to Criminal and Bohemian favours at Ealing save me from having to interact with the bone market, so that’s entirely positive, and the changes to hidden stashes and Khaganian Intrigue both seem positive although very minor.
I’m still not really clear what these changes and the preceding Rat Market changes really accomplish for the game’s economy though. They seem to be trying to equalise everything down so there isn’t an optimal grind, which I guess may mean people diversify their grinds but surely they’ll just take the easy London options rather than pursue activities at Zee (or, as I’ve found, you just click Professional Activities over and over again until your brain leaks out of your ears - only 30k echoes to go!)?
Like… nerfing spiderpope didn’t help, it just made people less interested in the bone market and the game grindier.
Nerfing the rat market didn’t help. It just frustrated everyone and took away good sources of efficient currency conversion and made the game less fun and more grindy.
This won’t help either; it will just make the late game more of a slog and a grind.
Like dear god I love the writing on the newer stories but FBG if you don’t create better late game grinds that handedly outclass things you aren’t improving or diversifying experiences, you’re just making it worse for everyone. This really sucks and was one of the last efficient currency conversions in the game, even though it was SIGNIFICANTLY worse than before and still requires WEEKS of patience to even APPROACH pre rat market nerf levels of profit. (And you can’t quite reach it even then.)
I’m really frustrated and disappointed with this set of changes. I want the game to get LESS grindy in the late game, not more. Once you run out of stories you should feel MORE powerful and well equipped for tasks like acquiring the cider, Übergoat and sandwurm, not LESS.
Ugh.
Just… can we please stop nerfing things and instead buff others or introduce new profitable activities? There will always be something that is strictly a better use of resources, that’s not a bad thing. It’s boring when that efficient thing is… something you can do from almost immediately after becoming a POSI.
Spending Tribute on economy items at the Court of the Wakeful Eye now costs 1 action, rather than 4.
Spending Favours to generate Tribute now costs 0 actions.
Hidden stashes (from ‘A Message in a Bottle’) can now be retrieved without actually entering certain locations that lock you into a set of actions before you can leave.
The branches in ‘Arriving at Port’, to either enter a zee location or cancel doing so, now cost 0 actions.
They give far better rewards:
Spending Favours at Jericho Locks now gives 30e worth of resources (was 27.5e)
Spending Criminal favours now gives Bone Fragments rather than a Human Arm.
Spending Bohemian favours now gives two Ivory Humeri rather than Holy Thighs. Ivory Humeri are now sellable at the Upper River for scrip.
Completing a Khaganian Intrigue now gives an additional Vital Intelligence.
I know people play the game in very different ways, but I really don’t understand what there’s to complain about here. I fully welcome these changes!
The conversion of resources has been nerfed. That’s the complaint. Converting echoes to Orphans to tribute to NW to bone market resources to scrip was a good conversion carousel when you, through playing other storyline, accumulate a bunch of extra resources you can’t sell for scrip. It’s about the conversion for me.
Hmm, I am not fully wrapped my head around these changes.
I liked tribute grind because it was a good distraction from worm riding and whatever base grind I performed. Once per week on average I was capped at tribute and went for smol trip to unload it.
Zee change looks good… but probably not good enough to lure endgame players into Zee. Except for world events like crab extermination, etc.
I am going to sit in Stacks anyway, so changes do not affect me personally. But I am interested to listen how other people feel about them.
Hmm…I really like being able to pick up the buried treasure without landing on the high-commitment islands, I’d been skipping all those ones. Very happy with the improved favours at Jericho, and no actions to arrive in port is nice.
The Tribute changes, I’m not quite sure yet. I’m not too much hung up with grinds being the best, so a nerf doesn’t necessarily bother me in and of itself. And in theory, I do agree with their goal of not having any one grind so superior that activities outside that one to-do list feel like a waste. But I do worry that the way they’re going about this whole grind-nerfing project might land up still leaving it feeling like there are only a few things worth doing, except that those things-worth-doing become a more narrow set of options than a very complex grind like mammoth ranching. Some of the things they’ve nerfed in the past have felt so severe that I haven’t really taken them up since (painting in Balmoral, looking at you), which just means the pool of actions that feel worth doing is a little smaller than it was before. So I think this might turn out to be positive in the long run as far as the the kind of gameplay that’s encouraged for end-gamers, but I’m not yet convinced it will. We’ll see, I guess.
I’ve cashed in Tribute perhaps thrice in the last five years. I simply don’t like an activity that requires spending 52 actions in a single unbroken chunk. Same reason I never did the old Eternal Arbor grind.
Specific details aside, I don’t think it’s good for the game that optimal play means a character is banished from primary gameplay for a sizable fraction of the week. It seems a bit larger than needed, but I’m glad that specific piece of the game is sanded off.
The Khanate is still remote from London, and any activity there is a time commitment. The Intelligence makes it interesting as a source of Scrip specifically.
Jericho Locks is fine I guess. It lacks flair? But it’s already my go-to for many favors and gives me a reason to swing by the Upper River deck.
Okay, had to go and re-read as hitting the threshold on mountain-sherds is extremely fast (essentially one full round of tribute, so 7 sherds). It tapers fairly aggressively downwards as well.
Someone’ll have to do the maths as to whether 22 tribute is worthwhile but my back-of-the-envelope maths says “barely”: 1 action to convert to tribute, 1 to convert back to a night whisper plus all the zailing for a 32% Rat Market bonus. 7 sherds per trip, so assuming 14 zailing actions (which is fairly optimistic but maks the maths easier!) tack on 2 actions for zailing and you’re making 20 echo profit for 4 actions. Piracy, plus the 2 extra tribute might edge it just above that, but extra zailing actions’ll pull it back down so you’re hovering around 5 EPA at best.
14 zailing actions is actually pessimistic, unless you’re a fresh PoSI with a Tramp Steamer.
Docking at port now costs 0 actions, so the total travel time from London to the Court and back is only 12 actions with any improved ship (11 actions with a Clipper).
It helped to move big money grind from middle to end-game. As for a grind grind to just spend AP, there’s always HG which doesn’t require a win.
I perfectly agree! No more night visits to the Continent and Rat market rushes, bottled treasures are more interesting and “back in the game”. God forbid to get one in the Republic and not check Wiki!
Sorry, yes. Knew my maths was off. It’s 7 at the full 35 but 11 at 22, which’d defray more of the zailing cost, at which point it might still be worthwhile, at least to offload my remaining stock of sherds.
Man, I have just been on the wrong side of FB’s updates this year! I still have my caches of 200+ now vaguely useless fiacre bones and a similar count of night whispers that were originally destined for diamonds. And I just last week (!) finished a whole year of dedicated piracy in advance of the upcoming zee festival, where I’m switching off of the piracy-friendly Obstinate and back to a zub, and would have been vastly helped by the buried treasure changes. Those are definitely great for anyone out doing zeefaring runs henceforth, but I’m personally pretty done with piracy now. In fact…I worry that they are a bit too great, and am betting that the treasure to fabulous diamond conversion will end up getting nerfed next. With rare 50x payouts on treasure as well as much reduced action cost (and viability for Republic runs), I’m supposing the EPA might be too favourable. Guess I’d better make a run and dump my remaining treasure, just in case.
Tribute was already dead to me with the last rat market nerf as I was just in it for the diamonds, so at least the enhanced favour payout is a good thing (especially the previously useless criminals one!).
Darn, I think I stopped reading at “now gives Bone Fragments” and assumed it applied to all skeletal material. Yeah, agreed, probably still skippable, unless the conversion to flourishing or mammoth ribcages makes any sense eventually.
Carapaces from The Stack, from Firmament Ch.2, offer a nice payout.
We had our weekend hoping diamonds will hit, but now you can just cash them normally over the months/years. Even w/o Market, Tribute grind was well around 6 EPA.
Hmmm, I think that too. I think the avg was around 20e so 50x will be 1k.
Pretty much… 8 AP to make a chimera with 4 wings for the extra ones you get. Not great, but not bad either (260/270 scrip).
