I just recently started my Third captain. My first captain lasted about 20 hours and I finally just let him die because even though I could get him somewhere in life, I was basically stalled out and just grinding for echoes for hours on end. Part of the problem was I was kind of "roleplaying" that captains personality as an honorable privateer for fallen london. The second captain did whatever they wanted for money and 40 hours later had escorted the Venturer byond the Horizon, raised London to supremacy, brought the whole Neathbow to the Curator, saw 11 Officers to their ultimate goals (including some deaths), Wrote a Zong of the Zee even though it was not one of her goals, and finally sailed off to the east in a stolen dirigible, leaving a Mansion full of heirlooms and an extra 25000 echoes to her successor.
Now on my third captain and I’m kind of… bored. I tried out a Corvette just for fun and discovered every port in the new game inside a couple hours, traded it out for the same Merchant Cruiser and setup my last captain had, and am ready to adventure to… I don’t know. Nothing on the zee scares me anymore. I was harvesting Lifebergs and Fluke Horns and Tyrant Moths at no risk to myself and started doing it again, but toward what end? I guess I could grind the other 4 or 5 legacy bonuses I couldn’t fulfill, but I don’t see anything to do fo rthe next captain after that either. I thought the Curator’s deed would allow me to start with a reasonably better ship, only to find out it didn’t cross characters. For being claimed as a rogue like and the comparisons I heard to FTL, I’m really kind of… disappointed. I went with this game over Darkest Dungeon because it was out of Early Access so I thought it was finished, but that doesn’t quite seem to be the case either. So… what is there left for me?
I wanted to try a captain that survived of prating and hunting, but the rewards for that are so low that it seems like another grind fest that I’m not interested in. The only last thing I could think of was taking a brand new, blank captain for a spin in the tiny Launch ship and see just how far and how fast I could do something ridiculous with it, but am still trying to figure out what the most impressive thing to do without exploiting SAY events in a single port or grinding for stuff again. edited by delta_angelfire on 2/16/2015
Have you tried the father’s bones ambition yet? Those five quest lines occupied me for quite some time.[li](Unless you prefer a character with weaker starting stats, getting those other legacy items was a pretty good idea.)[/li][li] edited by fortluna on 2/16/2015
I’d have to kind of agree. Once you have the basic mechanics sorted, it’s more about exploring the little storylets. If you’ve done all that, then there’s not much else to see, and it’s hard to argue that the edge stuff is worth grinding if you’re not just keen to read the text for reading’s sake.
It seems like new content will drop on the 23rd, so maybe check back in a couple of weeks and combine that new content with the things you have left to do?
I hesitated posting a subject like this one, but that’s true that once you have the ‘hang on things’, the game is rather ‘safe’. Sea monsters can easily be avoided if you don’t want a fight. There is no ‘sudden death’ in events (and that’s good!) and once you know how to make money, the rogue like dimension is very distant. This is mostly about making echoes and travelling to complete the story lines.
I would say either impose on yourself challenges or mod slightly the game. For challenges, you can for example never bring the map, i.e only navigate with what you see on screen and your memory of islands.
For modding, it’s very easy to mode the game actually.Open for example
C:\Users<your user name>\AppData\LocalLow\Failbetter Games\Sunless Sea\constants
then open with notepad++ navigationconstants.json
and then edit “GloomUpdatePeriod”:2 down to “GloomUpdatePeriod”:1
and suddenly, Terror is slightly more of a problem. There is a lot of possibility to make the game harder by modding.
Making money is easier than it should be, but the meat and potatoes of the game is the stories, and they take multiple games to unlock. That’s going to keep me playing for a long time. :)
Some people think the game is too hard, some people think it’s too easy. I don’t know what that says about the game, but I’d like to invite all of those people to a cocktail party and see what happens.
(Okay, but seriously - I’m optimistic - largely because I enjoy the "self-imposed challenge" mindset. It’s like playing Dwarf Fortress - you -could- just build a square underground fort that’s entirely self-sufficient, but the fun comes from building something big, ostentatious and, accordingly, vulnerable. Sunless Sea’s more linear than Dwarf Fortress, but there’s still fun to be had in saying "okay, this time I’m playing a whaling ship; this time, a Khanagian agent; this time, a small exploratory vessel.") edited by Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook on 2/16/2015
I believe, but can be wrong, that the vast majority of people finding the game too difficult are the ones before the ‘echo bump’. Once you know how to make echoes, difficulty is mostly gone.
My problem is that the game is too much the same every time. I, too, have run out of stuff to do with my current captain, as far as I can tell, I’ve done just about everything, except things that would require me to start over. I could, of course, but that would require committing suicide or retiring, which I really don’t want to do and then…? I would have to do so many stories again. And they just aren’t that interesting to read a second, third, fourth, fifth time. I skip through a good 95% of the text in this game at this point.
Considering the pricetags of most anything decent you can purchase with echoes, making money is certainly not easier than it should be.
This is, of course, ignoring how easy it is to get sunlight if you travel to the surface. But that will probably be fixed soon, so I do ignore it, as it’s not intended game behaviour.
Considering the pricetags of most anything decent you can purchase with echoes, making money is certainly not easier than it should be.
This is, of course, ignoring how easy it is to get sunlight if you travel to the surface. But that will probably be fixed soon, so I do ignore it, as it’s not intended game behaviour.[/quote]
But even ignoring that semi-exploit, making money isn’t hard. It’s just time-consuming. After you’ve burnt up all the questline money, find a trading loop that works and grind it. Over and over again. I had one on my last captain that made 3-4K a loop and took 45 minutes. So I did it. Over and over again. There was NO chance of dying; it didn’t go near the Avid Horizon. (Mt. Nomad is the only thing that has even an snowball’s chance of killing a prepared captain in something with more then starting Hull) I knew what to buy, where and when to buy it, what button clicks to make; I probably could have automated the whole thing if I cared to.
The OP really summed up a lot of my thoughts about Sunless Sea; I’m going to do the new Ambition tomorrow, probably Father’s Bones and the Journey East one when it comes out as well, and then…probably not pick it back up for quite a while. At this point, the challenge just isn’t there.