“It is the season for affection, is it not?” Mr Spices’ voice is high and fluting. It waves a shawl-enshrouded hand airily in the direction of the Bazaar. “It is incumbent upon us to ensure that the city is a fertile bed for budding romance.”
The Feast of the Rose is here! A festival bursting with affectionate activities, nuptial phantasies, burgeoning romance… and shot through with scorn. Tend to the business of your heart through ‘Celebrate the Feast of the Exceptional Rose’, available throughout London.
Maybe I am looking at the wrong place, but doing the fighting for Mr Spices is not accessible for characters that finished A Name signed in Blood. Is that on purpose?
Lmao Old Ressurection. She did all of that to get out of London and then she’s just gonna walk right back in because of a party? Classic Old Ressurection, love that gal.
This is great! As a player who’s seen too many Feasts and has too many companions (and spouses, and tattoos) already, this gives me a reason to participate!
Sadly I do not see unique rewards for those activities, looks like payout is in low tiers materials. Which you could easily get from Ratket, probably with better efficiency.
It looks like I can upgrade my spouse, the Cultured Attaché, but I need to wait for his card. What happens if the RNG is not kind and I don’t get it before the end of the Feast, will the option be available another way?
I’ve tried most of the Burgeoning Romance options. I still need to write a play at Court, not my favourite activity, I will do it just to see what happens. But I need to decide what to get from Mr Spices. I’m not planning on trading gifts as I can get enough masquing from the card to pick up the new companions.
One time only, you can exchange your Census badge for ten more Masquing. This lets you reach 40 without Fate. The badge cannot be replaced if you do this. Note that order is important, don’t do it with less than 30 Masquing.
Bl–d- RNG! Where the deuce is the Feast of the Rose card?! For something that is supposed to be 10x more common than common, the wretched thing just won’t show. I’ve had it just 3 times since this Feast began, and I have been drawing cards like mad!
Seriously, what do I have to do to get this card, drown a Starveling Cat in the well on Mutton Island, and then ram the bedraggled corpse down Mr. Spice’s throat on the steps of De Gustibus? Honestly!
EDIT: And 5 seconds after posting this, my next draw was the Feast of the Rose card! I swear this Forum has some serious black magic going on! Thank you, DevGods of RNG!
To be fair, that is only true if you already had a badge from when it first became available as a now retired access code. For those that didn’t get it then, the Unsanctioned Relicker is the only one time source.
Personally, I love these seasonal little “bonus pieces,” be it a novel spin on activities or just a few pieces of novel text. It feels a little like a literary equivalent of a box of chocolate pralines, a little like a real rhythm of the world being built and lived in.
In this case, it gives you reasons to take part in a variety of activities, some of which have not been relevant or worth it to me for years now. Variety is the key to long-lasting playerbase!
And the lab experiment, at the very least, is quite profitable, especially if you can employ both F.F. Gebrandt and the Eldest Daughter. It even gives Captivating Ballads which you can feed to Ratket!
I have a question, though. I suppose that when you separate from a spouse which you’d enhanced with Fate, and you later decide to re-marry them, you’d need to pay once again for the upgrade, right?
Sir Reginald seems to harbour rather… fateful feelings for both the Celebrated Model and the Secular Missionary, and recently was intriguingly smitten by the Devout Intriguer as well. Talk about femme fatales.
And that’s before even imagining they finally allow him to espouse January or November!
There’s not a single answer, it depends on the upgrade path for that spouse. From Reddit, the Incendiary Tastemaker has warnings that if separated, the Fate upgrade would need to be re-purchased. On the other hand, the Devout Intruiger can be divorced and re-wed, and the Devout Conspirator does not require additional Fate.
For the Secular Missionary, I know you retain the Fate-locked companion so I assume you could re-marry them. Does the upgraded Spouse require additional Fate beyond the original?
Good point. I was indeed referring to the Tastemaker, and the same will probably hold true for the other cases where you spend Fate for the upgrade, not the original companion. I.e., the Jewel Thief, Platonic Eminence Grise, the Hallowmas spouses etc.
I can’t believe I’ve missed the notice on the branch to separate from the Tastemaker; I’m not sure it was there last year when I believe I’ve checked it. It’s definitely not on the option to separate from your Dreamscape of Paramours, which is probably the same case.
The Foreign Office and Nadir-related spouse upgrades work differently in that you pay Fate for the option to marry them in the first place, and you can re-marry and re-upgrade freely then.
I’ll see if I’ll have the heart to once again split from my Model/Tastemaker and if yes, I’ll report here if that’s really the case for the Secular Missionary.
Season’s greetings to everyone!
It’s been pretty well summed up in a comment at the wiki page:
I did some (quite tired) calculations and the Thefts can go up to ~5.8 EPA if you can do the Parabolan Casing run in 4 actions and do it in bulk. The expedition also works quite nicely. If you source the Strong-Backed Labour in the Clay quarter and sell the Captivating Ballads obtained in the Rat Market in the future, you can reach approx. 5.2 EPA with the bonus.
And if you have your Laboratory fully upgraded and/or employ good assistants (F.F., Eldest Daughter), you can also attack 4.8-5 EPA range while also grinding Volumes of Collated Research.
The other options are not nearly so effective, but may be fun to do once or twice just for the text and flavour. The fight in particular gives you an excuse to train with the Whispering Duellist, and the Horticulture can provide Strong-Backed Labour to feed the expedition…
Personally I certainly hope that these options will stay, and ideally also include Surface Silk option next time around since I find that particular commodity somewhat bothersome to obtain…
