I wouldn’t necessarily point to "logic". Systems vary. As others have mentioned, video game "logic" mostly says that anything you can buy is an upgrade, and you should get as rich as possible and upgrade as much as possible in order to make linear progress toward achieving godlike power.
The Serpentine is nice, but without the assurance that he was likely to succeed (as I received with another Officer at Penstock’s Wicket), it didn’t feel right letting him hare off with wild revenge schemes that might get him killed. edited by Fretling on 2/14/2015
[ul][li]The only ship upgrade that I’m sure is worth buying is the Hellthrasher. With the Hellthrasher and Iron ~60 you can reliably one-hit zee-bats, steam-pinnaces, and Auroral Megalops, which means you don’t have to worry about getting killed in sight of home. Do not attempt to fight anything else in the starting ship, particularly if your turning rate is slow, until you have a lot more Iron. (I have not yet managed to construct any of the weapons created via plot events, or afford any of the ships with more gun slots.)[/quote][/li][/ul]Reproach is awesome. 200 echoes, one shots megalops and bats. Get it, die, pass it on.
The new clayman help here. +xxx engine power, -3 max crew. Means you can run an even lighter crew in bigger ships. I recently grabbed the Phorcyd covette (forward weapon slot) and with the clay men, it means I can run 6-7 crew and still be at full speed. Plus 200 hull. Annoyed about the storage, but you can’t have it all.
[quote=SporksAreGoodForYou][quote=zwol]Some personal observations.
The only ship upgrade that I’m sure is worth buying is the Hellthrasher.[/quote]
I already have the Hellthrasher, so the Reproach would be a downgrade ;)
… Looking through Carrow’s Naval Surplus, the Denunciation costs 500 echoes and is strictly worse than the Reproach, which only costs 200! That’s not right. Maybe those two have their stats swapped? And the Hellthrasher is 1500, which is overpriced for only +3 each hull and life damage relative to the next best deck weapon.
I bought the Hellthrasher 'way back around when Steel first came out, I’m not surprised it’s different now.
The new clayman help here. +xxx engine power, -3 max crew. Means you can run an even lighter crew in bigger ships. I recently grabbed the Phorcyd covette (forward weapon slot) and with the clay men, it means I can run 6-7 crew and still be at full speed. Plus 200 hull. Annoyed about the storage, but you can’t have it all.[/quote]
Good to know. Just having that bit of extra margin might be worth it in itself, several times I’ve had to limp home at half speed across the entire damn map, praying the zee monsters wouldn’t notice me and counting every single fuel and terror tick.
[quote=zwol]… Looking through Carrow’s Naval Surplus, the Denunciation costs 500 echoes and is strictly worse than the Reproach, which only costs 200! That’s not right. Maybe those two have their stats swapped? And the Hellthrasher is 1500, which is overpriced for only +3 each hull and life damage relative to the next best deck weapon.
[/quote]
I think that’s been mentioned in other threads, and is certainly backwards. I understand a fix is coming. But yeah, it seems like deck guns are generally pretty lame, and I can’t settle on a good forward weapon, so I’m running the heart-ender. Flensing seems better than torps, given the cost of torpedo ammo. Plus, with the flensing range, you can pretty much kite any zeemonster, because their charg attacks will never reach you. Just sit in reverse and pepper them. I should probably try out torpedos though.
With a bigger engine, they’ll definitely hurt fuel consumption, so often, I’ll keep them in the hold, and just switch out if/when when I get low on crew. edited by SporksAreGoodForYou on 2/14/2015
This is a game filled to the brim with riddles and puzzles and things you need to either guess or infer.
The stats on an engine being green and bigger than another engine? Is not an ‘unjustified’ inference. Bigger green numbers are (supposed to be) better than smaller green numbers.
Flavor text is not as important (or shouldn’t be as important) as actual listed stats, and the listed stats, and when the listed stats disagree with flavor text not directly on the engine, the stats should be what I can go by.
But showing engine power doesn’t prevent them from showing fuel efficiency, as is clearly evident on the engine that DOES show fuel efficiency.
I stopped paying attention to ZeaCat when s/he demonstrated they were crazy and eager to play the victim role.
But none of you seem to be arguing with the ‘end result’ of what they’re describing and I’m responding to each of you that supports their final conclusion: That engines deceptively consume more fuel than their speed increase provides for by failing to list that loss of fuel efficiency as a stat.
Days before starting this thread, the kinds of risks I was taking involved shooting moth-bird-things sailors were superstitious about while sailing back from sailing off the northern edge of the zee and ending up farther away from London than I ever had been before. I take plenty of risks, I’m just trying to not be reckless.
The thing is, I’m not seeing that many different choices. Unless my starting character creation wildly alters the quests and choices available to me, or death opens up other options, all the interesting choices are out where I can’t really zail on a whim or any time a choice comes up, only one option sounds like the smart choice. I’m starting to see what people’s objection to this game is. Death and dying probably means re-reading the same chapters of a book over again, not experiencing a vastly new story. And that sounds boring, so I’m avoiding death.
Strategy guides, spoilers, and wikis should never be considered a "resource" in a story/writing based game such as this. It’s acceptable for freeform sandboxes such as Minecraft, but not for this game. Never for this type of game.
Two objections to this. First, I went and tried X, and it didn’t really work out. (Visiting Venderbight cost me significantly, Sphinxstone and a risky trip to the south east resulted in a slight increase in my money buffer at cost of the near destruction of my ship, and that’s it. Of the four ports I uncovered, only one seems possibly worth revisiting, the other three seem empty and worthless, or worse, like a trap I shouldn’t touch.)
Second, I shouldn’t have to come to the forums for guides and instructions on what to do next. The game being too aimless and lacking in indications of changes to quest lines, etc, is a problem that needs to be solved in the game’s design, not by requiring players to visit the forums (or worse, visit wikis). When every trip out can be your last unless you make sufficient money on that trip to survive AND trading is a pointless exercise in futility unless only done opportunistically, not having a clear goal while also having too many choices in possible routes to take makes it pretty much impossible to know which choice to make, leaving you sitting there paralyzed.
The idea of starting the book over from the beginning again is exhausting just to think about. While I like reading books, I don’t like re-reading them, especially when reading this one takes so much time. I tend to read fast, the vast distances between sentences in this one makes reading almost a chore.
I’ve got another goal in mind, now that I can actually (barely) afford it. It’ll probably work out. Probably. But the game seriously needs some work still in how it presents information, demonstrates the change of time and circumstances, etc. edited by Moleculor on 2/14/2015
Well, to be honest, I think you need to stop playing. I don’t think you’re enjoying it and don’t think it’ll be productive for you to try and push through. Not meaning to sound harsh or mean, but plenty of people have tried to help and none of it has taken.
I will finish with a couple of points though:
The fact that the engine power is green DOES mean it’s an upgrade. It has more engine power. If you look under the “Iron & Misery Co.” tab in the shop, it says “Bigger engines consumes more fuel”. Therefore it’s logical to infer that engine power will effect fuel consumption.
The Hunter’s Keep chain DOES tell you something is changing. After the second or third visit the text at the bottom literally says, “You are acquainted with the sisters but something has changed”. The sphinxstones don’t, I’ll grant you that, but I don’t think it’s supposed to be a quest chain anyway. It’s something you do when you are heading back to London and have room in your hold and then suddenly, “Woah, story!”. I think it’s a good way of doing, having a story appear out of a seemingly mundane task, but can understand it if you disagree.
In truth, if you enjoy the game, you’ll find a way to get by. I never played the beta, just bought the game on release day and I haven’t had the problems you had. So you’ll either find a way to keep playing and have fun, or you’ll stop. I don’t think there’s anything anyone can do to help you.
Its the nature of rogue-like games not to hold your hand or necessarily tell you what the best strategy is. FTL, Darkwood, Dark Souls, a bunch of games are just like this, do you need to look up a wiki for them? It’d certainly make your chances of success better rather than dying dozens of times and learning what works and what doesn’t, but then where is the experience?
And seriously, does the difference power and fuel efficiency not make much sense?
I don’t know, I think some people just aren’t used to how this game wants people to think or play, and it turns them off.[li] edited by Gideon Xanthous on 2/14/2015
Yeah, sorta. I hate to say this but I think you’re . . playing the game wrong, for lack of a better way to say it. This isn’t a standard game and it doesn’t follow standard game design "rules". You’re saying a lot of things about what "this type of game must have" and trying to impose your own view of how the game "should" be played; everyone else is telling you to play the game a different way; you’ve decided you don’t want to play the game that way but want to do it your way. Your way doesn’t sound very fun, so maybe try something else? Darkest Dungeon is a pretty good indy game with some similarities in tone and atmosphere, maybe try that. (I wrote a Guide for that game also, it’s on Steam in the Guides section).
Ultimately, this is an exploration game. You have to either explore on your own and be ok with the inherent risk of that – which frankly it just seems like isn’t your thing, given that uncovering four whole ports & travelling to Venderbight seems to have topped out your risk-tolerance meter – OR you need to go online and figure out what options to choose to minimize the risk. You don’t have to do either – you can just dive right in and accept the risk of death, without ever going online at all – but those are your options. You can either dive in and start doing "reckless" things and accept the consequences, or you can go online and do outside research and prepare and minimize the risk, or you can go play something else instead. Good luck whatever you choose! edited by Dr. Hieronymous Alloy on 2/14/2015
But not to the extent that it does. It’s logical to assume that since engines with improved fuel efficiency show that as a stat, engines with reduced fuel efficiency would also show that as a stat.
No, it said that on my first visit. Literal first visit, with my first captain. In fact, I’m fairly certain it said that before I talked to the sisters (I succeeded at some other exploration option.) I assumed that I had missed some sort’ve introductory stuff by exploring before speaking. When my second captain came around, and it provided me with the exact same interaction results prior to receiving the "something has changed" message, and then the exact same interaction results after receiving (on the first or second visit) the "something has changed" message, I assumed it was a bug. If something is changing, I’d expect things to change, not stay the same.
The layout of my islands combined with the vast amount of hold space required for it made this something that would have never happened ‘naturally’ for this captain, and considering I fully intend to try to not die… it would have been ages before I saw it. Considering the way it’s discussed here as if it’s a near ‘required’ early-game thing in this thread? Bad design. I’d seriously suggest that the Sphinxstone just needs to take up half the space it currently does.
Uncovering four ports didn’t "top my risk-tolerance meter". Running out of fuel (or rather, getting to a point where I had just enough fuel to get back to London) is what did it. Uncovering those four ports was the limit to what I could do before needing to head back to London. What was I supposed to do, keep sailing until I run out of fuel, intentionally losing what progress I had managed?
Travelling to Venderbight (and then on to Wither) at the suggestion of people in this thread and it costing me money for no return? That also ‘tops my risk-tolerance meter’, because losing money with nothing to gain for it is going to kill me if I do it too often. And it’s not the death that worries me, it’s the loss of progress and the necessity of having to go through all the same motions over again that sounds so damn boring. From what I can tell, I’m already going to have to play this game four+ times just to see most of the content, so I’d rather try to keep the repetition to a minimum.
I’ve made plenty of 12-15 port loops around the map. I’ve sailed off the northern edge knowing it was probably a bad idea, still did it any way, and still managed to limp back to Fallen London. I’ve clicked on most of the challenges I come across, so long as they were actually available and not red-text high risk, or they didn’t disappear when I clicked on a different option.
My problem was I had done all that, multiple times, and I was running out of money doing it. I had run out of things to do that didn’t sound like a waste of time or sheer suicide. The only thing left was to either spend more money than I actually had, load up with too little fuel to reach my destination, and try to deliver coffee to some asshole just for the ability to shop at a location I don’t even really see a reason to shop at (or to do it in a ‘safer’ way that would take five times as long, and tax my RL sanity/patience), or to sail off into areas of the map I saw no chance of being able to return from (i.e. commit suicide). The game actively told me not to bother with trade (writing off shop’s trade goods, the Sphinxstone stuff, etc), so I didn’t consider Sphinxstone an ‘option’ (and two later attempts at it reinforced that opinion).
The repeatable stuff? Doesn’t change enough until it finally does, and then it changes in one fell swoop. The Hunter’s Keep is a perfect example of this: I had something like eight identical interactions in that house, all the while the game "claiming" something had changed. No, nothing was changing. Nothing at all. And then, suddenly out of left field, everything was different. That’s not the gradual change the game suggests is happening, that’s a lever being flipped in game logic, or someone forgetting to write the necessary intermediate content.
The Sphinxstone is another example of this. Identical interaction after identical interaction. Nothing to suggest anything other than cash-money will ever come of it, and there’s no narrative reason to pursue it. Unless you luck out with a good map layout (which I didn’t), you won’t ever visit the place, and you won’t ever see what it leads to.
I have no problems taking risks when I see a reason to do so. The game lacks sufficient reasons presented. It’s like you’re supposed to meta-game the fact that risk leads to reward, rather than risk being actual risk. edited by Moleculor on 2/14/2015
I’m not sure what more you want from this forum, Moleculor. It seems like you don’t like some pretty essential elements of the game, like the slow pace of exploration and the need to repeatedly die and start a new captain. Those things probably aren’t going to change. What would make you feel better about playing, or feel better about quitting the game and playing something else?
Yeah, I’m running out of ideas here. If you dont’ like the game you don’t like the game, sorry. I guess you could try modding the game files – you can edit the values to like triple ship speed, halve fuel consumption, etc. if you want.
[quote=]Yes. This game involves taking a lot of risks, GENUINE risks, when you actually don’t know what will happen. The tagline is "Lose your mind. Eat your crew." and the startup screen literally tells you that ‘your first captain will likely die.’ You will make mistakes. You’ve clearly spent a lot longer with your very first captain still alive than most unspoiled people would, but you will have to take some risks.
That is the part of the point of punishing games. They are NOT fair, the consequences of your actions are NOT going to be clear the first time around. You will make mistakes, you may fail. As you go, you learn what does and doesn’t work the hard way - in many cases, it’s not obvious at all, and there’s not even any clue. Try, fail, learn, fail, improve, fail, improve more, succeed, that’s the way these games work. Sunless Sea’s actually fairly forgiving for a """roguelike."""[/quote]
Also:
Now, I do agree that Engine Power is poorly labeled, and kind of bullshit.
Aside from that though, I don’t know why you’re even here. You ignore everything people tell you (before you bring up Venderbight AGAIN, people told you you ‘might already have’ colorful items, it’s not our fault you decided sailing over there on a trip without doing anything else was a good idea instead of just looking at the descriptions of items you do have), you complain that nothing ‘seems’ obviously fruitful so there’s no point in doing anything. Because you might hit a ‘trap’ that isn’t useful.
People keep mentioning the wiki not because it’s "the only way" to figure things out. It’s because you’ve steadfastly refused to figure things out the way the game is meant to be played - trying things out without knowing whether they’ll work or what will happen next. You don’t want to investigate things and learn the hard way, and yet you also claim that you don’t want your hand held. You do something, you can’t see the immediate benefit, and you decide it’s worthless.
To be frank? It really sounds like you came into this game expecting that all the warnings and talk about learning through failure were for other, lesser people, and you’re upset that you really can’t just figure things out without taking any risks or messing up ever. You think this isn’t ‘fair.’ No. Lots of things in this game really are problems, but this isn’t one of them. The fact that you can’t just figure things out ahead of time, that you will try things and get burned a lot, that is literally the most-stressed thing in the sales pitches.
And I’ll say AGAIN, since you’ve ignored it every time someone has brought it up: if permadeath seems like a pain and makes you unwilling to take risks, TURN IT OFF.
Honestly I’m starting to suspect he just wanted somewhere to vent before continuing on… He does make a few good points re: miscommunication from the tutorial, etc. edited by Olorin on 2/14/2015
No, I was here for exactly what I said. And as I’ve already said, y’all helped me find a goal and put me into a position where I can (barely) pursue it.
I just expected a game with this intriguing of a backstory and writing to provide more feedback and information than it does. I’m here for the writing, and I feel like the writing is dropping the ball. Eight+ identical unchanging events is defined as ‘progress’ somehow, and that just doesn’t feel right.
I guess…reading this thread, molecular: what are the things you want to get out of playing this game? what do you want to experience? edited by Marianne Anders on 2/15/2015
Coming late to this thread (which, after skimming through it, is possibly just as well) but I wanted to comment on this.
I think this may have been deliberate on the part of the authors. I think you are supposed to feel like nothing will ever change there, and that the sisters will always be around to provide a little oasis of comfort and normality in the middle of the cold, dark world that is Sunless Sea. I think that the Event, when it arrives, is intended to be unexpected and shocking. It certainly shocked me the first time I encountered it. If the game had been constantly and obviously reminding me that there was a story in progress, I think they would have lost the element of surprise, and diminished the impact.
Agree with FogChicken1 there! I had some inkling that the Salt Lions had been updated to eventually end, but I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know about Hunter’s Keep changing until it happened. There was definitely a “what the heck omg no stop what are you doing!” moment. :P