To be honest I don’t know how much faster you go and whether it is worth a barrel of fuel and the risk of hull damage. But next time I am facing almost certain death and have sufficient fuel on board I will give it a go.
Owen Wulf - yes they take up hold space but I don’t know whether it is a bug or not.
It would be an odd stipulation on their usage, but if it is not a bug then perhaps I would be beter off using a lower level harpoon than the one in Caminus Yard, especially given my emphasis on trading.
Just checked for new stories again - I can now get a tattoo, if I want:) Bound Sharks aren’t quite as tough as they were, carousing in Wolfstack Docks seems to be the same though. Maybe there are other terror reducing things somewhere though. I need to poke around a bit more and see if I can find any changes in other ports.
First impressions of the newest update, having played for half an hour:
The tattoo is most excellent - I received it just after my first journey (it will be received within the first few, I believe), and I believe it should be useful enough to new players who inadvertently suffer substantial levels of Terror. The buff to Terror reduction to Hunter’s Keep is certainly welcome, and it is small enough that abusing it is, in my opinion, not very likely.
I have so far noticed a decrease in frequency of Terror events, and they are certainly less punishing than before. However, the rate of Terror gain is still slightly too high for my tastes, and it’s still limiting the amount of exploration one would like to do.
I know, right? :D
So, I began a new game as a Veteran who dreams of Wealth, and made a few runs to Venderbight and back. He accepted the Blind Bruiser’s proposal, as well as an Admiralty commission in Port Cecil, and decided to make a round trip via Venderbight, Wither, Codex, the Avid Horizon and Demeaux Island. It was a chancy prospect to begin the Cheery Man’s missions so early, and, indeed, he was soon being sent to Gaider’s Mourn, without the money to invest in a better ship or even bigger guns. Worse still, the crewman he’d picked up earlier had proved to be a Snuffer, and he had no idea whose identity they’d stolen.
Terror was becoming an issue by this point, so he called at Hunter’s Keep and introduced himself. Then, he began a round trip southwards from London - first visiting Mutton Island and enjoying an impromptu concert, then trading in news and trophies at Abbey Rock, surveying Station III, passing Lick-A-Monkey Crag, admiring the strange beauty of Khan’s Glory, before cutting across to the Mourn to make the trade. Unfortunately, one of the crew lost their footing in a disagreement with another ship’s crew and plummeted to their death. This was felt to be a sign to return home as promptly as possible, and, on arriving in London, this dangerous voyage was honoured with a tattoo from Clathermont’s.
One or two further Tomb-Colony runs followed before the Blind Bruiser returned, with another package to be collected from the Corsair’s Forest. Unfortunately, money was still tight - and that d-mnable Snuffer was still lurking aboardship. An encounter with a shark and another with a pirate meant that, by the time he made it to the Mourn, the ship was a wrong step away from falling apart, and had only a skeleton crew. Limping north through the Principles, it escaped a giant eel only through skillful Evasion - though not before the beast had plucked a sailor from the deck. There were only two of the crew remaining - the captain… and the Snuffer. It was a close business indeed, but the captain’s military experience prevailed, and the creature was soon being rolled from the deck into the zee.
Thank goodness, another hand was willing to join at the Funging Station, and the two of them managed to induce the poor ship to limp home, evading pirates and crabs, dashing into the relative safety of light-vessels’ beams and skirting around whirlpools. They’re back in Wolfstack now, installing some really big guns on the old tub, and this game is thoroughly marvellous.
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There are several items in this category. I have hold space currently occupied by unclear devices (which appear not to be sellable? but which I am unlikely to ever use; still, an excellent escape hatch if the situation arises), watchful curios, a rat sender, some fluke cores, and torpedo nets despite never having met an enemy who uses torpedoes. Also a stash of Strange Catches and Live Specimens still on hold for the Zong, and the heart-ender.
Right now, in addition to port reports I have 26 items in the ‘curiosity’ category; the distinction between the two is as far as I can tell mostly arbitrary.
I’ve been hoping for a Snuffer to see what happens with the event at Abbey Rock locked by it but no such ‘luck’ yet :).
I feel like it would make sense to have terror events be far more terrifying, but to slow the rate of ambient terror game while sailing the zeas. It just seems goofy right now. Flicking my lights on and off while sailing the coast, oh look! There go 4 zailors, throwing themselves to their watery graves about 5 feet from the port of London! It’s just a drain on gameplay. If the ambient rate were slowed significantly, and more interesting ways to gain terror (that added lots of terror) were introduced, it might help the pace and feel.
[quote=Ewan C.]
[li]I’ve been hoping for a Snuffer to see what happens with the event at Abbey Rock locked by it but no such ‘luck’ yet :).[/quote]
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[/li][li]Try recruiting a zailor directly when the option to recruit officers appears in FL, I found mine there (and I will never recruit mundane zailors from there ever again)
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We really need a scrollbar or something for storylets in London (and perhaps other ports eventually, but London’s currently the only one with more than, like, three separate storylets), because at 8 storylets in my 1360x768 window they start to get obscured by the Officers panel and I’ve been told that if there are more than can fit in the window vertically then they all disappear.
It’s nice to see that I can finally toss things overboard without freezing. Now back to my hobby of hunting Lifebergs!
Will there be an option in the future to get more than one tattoo? I’m very happy with mine, but it was implied that you could get more than one at a future date, but the option hasn’t shown up again? (I say "implied" but really I’m basing it on the fact that the "no tattoo" option specifically says "once only" while the tattoos don’t, so it’s fairly vaguely implied. But still, that’s how I interpreted it.)
re: terror, could I suggest that the distance from shore before it starts to build be increased just slightly? Like, another boat-length? Just around the main landmasses. It makes sense that you can only be about a boat-length away from small islands before you lose the benefit they provide, they’re small, they’re in the middle of the Underzee, and swarming with angler crabs, not very comforting. But really for the mainland to the west, and the larger islands, it makes no sense that you need to be that close.
If you don’t take the turn near Carissa’s Point, or down around Davies Bay, just right you can gain a couple of points while absolutely bathed in light, and in clear view of the big, comforting mainland, just because your turn is wide. Just a thought. The distance from the other stuff seems about right. (though it still rises too fast).
The boost from visiting the sisters is very nice :) A similar boost in London and I might just about stop complaining about terror :p
edited by Inky Petrel on 6/22/2014
Ooh, you jerks. Giving us Hunter’s Keep only to take it away again. Well, one sister’s still with us, so it’s not a total wash, eh?
Could you please clarify what you mean? To the best of my knowledge, Hunter’s Keep still has three sisters.
Wait what? It still had three last time I was there. frets I like the sisters! I hope they’re still there.
I was at Hunter’s Keep a few minutes ago and all three sisters were present.
After more time spent with the game I feel like Terror isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be, or as bad as I thought it was–once you have the hang of it, managing terror is relatively easy. You can make it all the way to Port Cecil and back with a net gain of only two or three Terror (from the Zee, anyway; Port Cecil itself is another story) if you cling to land and/or buoys the whole way. Which is why putting the buoys on the chart would be enormously helpful; given their crucial importance to navigation, I can’t imagine any Zee-captain not marking them down.
I feel like the Terror tutorial is kind of ambiguous, though; "at Zee, away from land" to me just suggested "not docked"–I had no idea that being near the coast reduced Terror gain by a step until I read it in this thread.
Also, I think it must be a bug that the shores of Mt. Palmerston don’t reduce Terror; for all that Mt. Palmerston is kind of ominous and not all that comforting, plenty of other eerie landmasses–the Principles of Coral, the Avid Horizon, etc.–work just fine. I can’t imagine that a crew just coming out of a journey across the dark of the Unterzee wouldn’t be relieved to see Mt. Palmerston on the horizon.
edited by Jack Vaux-Harrowden on 6/22/2014
The sisters experience a slight disruption in services eventually. I was actually quite afraid that they -and the other places already featured in FL- would have plot armor against any shocking stories, glad (and sad) to see that is not the case.
Have the Peculiar Noises stories been altered, or am I just spectacularly unlucky? Every time I over-stoke my engines, I have not one but two or three fires in quick succession.
I’ve seen it happen frequently or not at all. It depends on the whims of the RNG. I wouldn’t be surprised if going to the L&S shipyards increases your chances, but it’s hard to tell.
I had that new rare event from Peculiar Noises happen to me. Very entertaining, even though it lasted exactly two seconds before canceling itself off.