In comes the new thread, same as the old thread. Here we post our feedback and general musings on the Gold, or Early Access, version of Sunless Sea.
a question: are the EA market options for Palmerston’s Reach meant to be the final ones? I’d have thought we’d have an option to sell souls there for a good price, and buy fuel on the cheap.
edited by IHNIWTR on 6/17/2014
edited by IHNIWTR on 7/1/2014
an addition: I seemed to have been able to submit a port report for Khan’s Heart without ever visiting it, or ever having it in my inventory, directly to the Admiral.
Windowed mode seems to have vanished into the ether. I no longer get the option to make it be windowed mode.
another observation: zee monsters seem to be obscenely dangerous now. I approve of giving them more hit points, as well as decreasing the punch your own cannons and illumination options pack, but now their bites and seeking options are devastating. The buff has gone beyond requiring you to stock up on gear, raise your stats and playing it smart to leaving you absolutely no room for a single error or you’re dead.
I agree, the zee monsters are devastating. I got blown out of the water twice in the last hour of playing. It was less the fun.
Terror also charges up like no bodies business, playing it safe, following the lights, waiting for light beacons to rotate to favourable sailing directions are all good tactics but terror still charges upwards at an ungodly rate.
Loving it so far!
Terror does seem to increase insanely fast, and I’m not sure the most effective way to reduce it (although I’ve only played an hour so that’s hardly a surprise).
One small niggle I have is with the way in which one moves the chart around, it seems fairly confusing and personally I find it quite difficult. Scrolling around the chart by moving the mouse to the edges or using arrow keys/WASD is significantly more intuitive in my opinion, rather than the click-and-drag-a-tiny-bit-or-you-shoot-off-into-the-middle-of-nowhere-at-breakneck-speed implementation. Other than the chart issue, I’m loving it so far!
Ouch! I thought I was playing in the Merciful version with everything I built up playing Amethyst but I got killed and couldn’t go back to an earlier save.
Oh well back to the start again and it is tougher, the beasties range has expanded so I don’t know the safe routes to avoid them … yet.
The first pirate I encountered almost sunk my ship. It got harder.
Does anyone still have the "all options visible"-thing? I thought that was done with the new release?
One of my saves is massively bugged; all of London’s cards stay open when I set sail. It then freezes upon any interaction. The other saves are fine, although I’m still getting a bug when my hold is full and I need to jettison cargo.
Yeah zee-beasts are really hard now; even with 75 Mirrors, 40 Veils and 50 Iron I got totally wrecked by a Bound-Shark of all things (in one hit!). Then I reloaded and ran into an Angler Crab, which also summarily owned me in seconds. Everything seems to illuminate more, hit harder and have more health to boot. Lamps don’t seem to do an awful lot despite being super expensive.
I think Terror is about the same as it was last version, but now Mutton Island isn’t super great for terror reduction so it kinda feels worse. welp
A whole bunch of Port Reports are super broke; Godfall’s report needs the Chapel of Lights report instead (and shows up even if you don’t meet the requirements), the Khan’s Heart report requires you to have no Khan’s Heart reports and Polythreme requires 1 Polythreme Port Report to get the Port Report. i should probably just send a bug report but i’m writing words here already so nyeh
The Khanate looks super goddamn neat, although I didn’t have the goods needed to actually do anything there. You can zail inside of the trimarans that are parked around though- they don’t have collision, which is a little bit silly
edited by Spacemarine9 on 6/17/2014
Bound Sharks have 100 life not just 5 like before. I expect their other stats have been boosted as well.
As I said my previous saved game got nerfed by being sunk but I am quite enjoying starting from scratch. i am not starting some stories though as I know that they will probably send me to places that I wouldn’t survive. Until I die in this game I won’t know if the Merciful version works or not.
edited by reveurciel on 6/17/2014
Yeah, I agree that monsters seem crazy broken hard now. I’m not even sure what the point is in their being that difficult; I have fairly decent stats (in the 50+ range across the board, which takes a non-trivial amount of effort) and even just evading every turn a Western Angler Crab took me to fully illuminated inside like two moves. Plus it looks like its life was quadrupled, from 50 to 200.
I’m not really sure what the point of having relatively common and close-in-to-London monsters be that crazy tough. Nobody’s going to want to grind away on Low Barnet pirates for that long before they can move on to more serious beasts.[li]
edited by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy on 6/17/2014
The monsters are difficult enough right now that I’m worried about grind. It was difficult enough saving up for upgrades in the last build. I understand that the game probably wants players to generally run from monsters and pirates, but running into anything other than an Auroral Megalopse shouldn’t essentially be a death sentence, and my battles are largely “evade.”
The usual format:
The great:
[ul][li]UI changes! Things are very pretty, and I really like the visual differences, especially pause having a visible impact.[/li][/ul]The good:
[ul][li]More places to see! The Khanate is pretty cool. I’m intrigued by the content, the snares are fun, and port reports from more places are a good thing!
[/li][/ul]The Bad:
[ul][li]port report bugs are kind of frustrating. Lamps are very underwhelming, and are so expensive that there’s no reason at all that I’d want to spend money on them, especially given that having one actively penalizes my stats. Strange energies raises terror astronomically, and there are still so few ways to effectively handle terror, especially in early gameplay that it’s not worth it.[/li][li]Echoes are still difficult to obtain without a considerable amount of grind.
[/li][/ul]The ugly:
Summary: The visual and story content continue to be fun, and what I love the most. Some of the new content/equipment needs to be balanced in order for it to be more appealing. The difficulty spike in this update is very frustrating, and I’m hoping that things such as fuel, echoes, and terror can be balanced out later to make early gameplay something that isn’t so difficult, and maybe mid-to-high-level gameplay, particularly combat, can have more of difficulty curve than a sudden, impossibly punishing spike that is only apparent when it’s too late.
edited by ZackOak on 6/18/2014
edited by ZackOak on 6/18/2014
Is this the place to make suggestions that the devs will see? I’ve been enjoying the game, but it feels a bit odd that you can’t improve your skills though failing/succeeding skill checks, like in fallen london. Obviously skills would increase at a slower rate than in Fallen London, and maybe for balance they would start a bit lower, but I think being able to improve qualities through use would add another interesting layer to the game.
Unless I get really desperate to tour the Khanate before then, I’m just going to skip this particular build version entirely and stick with the last Amethyst build until the next patch comes out. Everyone I know who’s played it and a few more people in this thread say it’s way too hard now. I don’t want to either die constantly to formerly weak monsters or throw all my hard-earned echoes down the drain and have to claw my way back up when it’s rebalanced. And this is a big deal for me, because in every other new build I threw myself at the new content as soon as I could! I want to see the new areas and new stories, but I don’t want to get ultramurdered.
also I exclusively played in windowed mode and I’m not happy to hear that it’s no longer an option
edited by CameoAppearance on 6/18/2014
Hi I’m new, I just got to play the game today and was having fun. The art looks wonderful! I just have 1 thing that is bugging me. When I pre-ordered the game I was expecting a different type of fighting style then what is present in the game. I shouldn’t have assumed anything since I do not believe It was shown in any trailers ( I may be wrong) but its kind of a let down for me. I was looking forward to more of a fast paced broadside cannon action. Not the turn-time based rpg style fights. Other than that I really enjoyed the hour I got to play!
edited by McSpiffy on 6/18/2014
I’m taking crack at the game and so far I really enjoy it. However I feel like the panel showing my officers takes up to much space. When ever I’m traveling north or east it blocks my view and is quite annoying. Having the option to hide them away in a menu or something would be wonderful.
I will add: I understand the stylistic and atmospheric reasons for the things that happen in the game. The Unterzee is a dangerous place, and death is a very real possibility that you might never avoid in the long run. Exploration with a steamship is historically not a wise decision. It’s atmospherically consistent for these things to exist, but at the same time, from a gameplay perspective, it’s not very fun to struggle to make a profit, or to contend with an incredibly level of difficulty in a one-death game system. There needs to be the possibility of reward that at least matches the risk involved.
I’ll also add that I can still play in windowed mode, and I’m not sure why others can’t.
edited by ZackOak on 6/18/2014
Well, it’s good to know that windowed mode isn’t 100% gone; maybe Aesc had a bug or something.