Complaint: changes in fearsome duelist are no longer reported as changes. It just says “increase fearsome duelist to 5 to unlock new stories”, no sign of CPs or current level.
Maybe it changed to something else as I was writing this, because my Myself tab now shows description of the quality as “A Fearsome Duellist 3 - Respected - increase this to 5 to unlock new stories!”?
I’ve just finished replaying the Black Ribbon content. Is it normal to be asked once again what your martial tradition is? Back when selecting the reset [I went back to the silken chapel] the Patch already asked me to pick a martial tradition.
Just checking, I’m probably going to select the same one again to keep with the character’s theme.
edited by Shalinoth on 9/25/2015
Has anyone been able to beat Captain Vendrick in order to raise Fearsome Duellist to 5? One of my alts just beat him, and got the Bringer of Death quality (since it’s always a duel to the death with him) but no increase in Fearsome Duellist. Not sure if there was some option I didn’t see due to locks.
[Addendum: maybe having a friendly duel with him increases your Fearsome Duellist but killing him doesn’t?]
edited by metasynthie on 9/25/2015
I believe only Chi Lan and Feducci can raise it to 5.
A fight with certain lower combatants might be a ‘wasted’ battle in terms of raising Fearsome Duelist, if you’re already higher than their cap. From what’s written here, it doesn’t seem to be telling some people that’s why there was no change, however. In my case, I killed Feducci and he killed me right back, I went to the River for the first time, came back and beat Chi Lan. Then it triggered a page I couldn’t leave without choosing a new Martial Tradition [again]. Curiously, I didn’t seem to need to fight the lower enemies at all. I just killed Vendrick and went right for Feducci.
The odd thing is that the help text on those choices say Vendrick can raise it to 5, Chi Lan to 6, and Feducci above 6.
That is strange. I’m at 5 and it triggered the exit page for the Black Ribbon part of the game. Perhaps some tinkering has been done behind the scenes, to make it easier - but the help text hasn’t been updated to reflect that?
I must say, it’s a great improvement; I didn’t like the clutter in Wolfstack Docks before. I believe I’ve found a small oversight, though. In the "Challenge a Black Ribbon Duellist" master card, all the options (the various duellists) require "Running Battle… 5" to be unlocked, even though all of them but one actually require a higher value of "Running Battle", and once I click to proceed to their individual cards, it becomes clear that I cannot duel them with "Running Battle… 5". (I’d send an e-mail but I’ve been trying to avoid using Outlook lately. My laptop’s old… So old…)
OK, I have gotten lost in all this (mostly because I managed to misclick and go right back to start, despite having had Duellist at 15 or so, maxed Dangerous, yadda yadda). How do I get started on procuring savage beasts? I won another Black Ribbon duel, but all it said was ‘Duellist already greater than 5’ and no trigger…?
Duke: I’m fairly sure it’s always been that way, being able to see all the options even without enough of the relevant quality. See thefts in the Flit: you can see the Brass Embassy and Bazaar with just Casing 5 (though you need low enough suspicion). I think it’s done that way to make it clear what the highest level needed is, so someone doesn’t try grinding up to 50 of whatever quality in search of nonexistent tougher challenges.
Evan: I don’t recall the exact triggers, and they may have changed since it used to just be a dangerous check, but a storylet should appear in Wolfstack saying you have a letter from Mr. Inch. I was also able to directly start the story from talking to the Clay Coalman under the local gossips in my lodgings.
edited by Optimatum on 9/25/2015
I’d agree with Optimatum. It’s important to see what’s available, even before you qualify for it. Otherwise people might grind up and drop down on lesser fights, never knowing there were higher targets to strive for.
The only time I don’t like this approach is on opportunity cards. When they show up in your hand and are entirely unplayable due to present circumstances, it feels like a waste. Perhaps if these unplayable cards all had a no-requirement generic playable alternative on them it’d be fine. But that’s another matter.
Has anyone else been asked to choose a Martial Tradition twice? [Once in the Patch. Once by completing Black Ribbon]
I don’t mind opp cards that I can’t use right then, since plenty of times rare cards need some unusual items or large quantities of things. Having a generic option on everything would take a lot of work changing all the existing cards for little player benefit when the work could be far better spent on creating entirely new content. And of course it would make no sense to prevent people from drawing cards if they didn’t meet any of the requirements since that could mean people never draw some of the more unusual cards, not to mention the extra server load from calculations.
Does this mean, then, that a storylet with multiple requirements will not appear at all unless one of them is fulfilled? Because it looks strange how, for example, I appear to have three out of four prerequisites for duelling Captain Vendrick (the remaining one being Wounds), even though I know that I only have two. The game seems to be lying to me.
Unless Failbetter has further modified Storynexus recently, a storylet (the things that appear at the root level of a location like “Wolfstack Docks”) is always invisible if you don’t meet the requirements. A branch (the choices that appear inside a storylet) can be set to be visible or invisible if you don’t meet the requirements. I imagine this is part of why all the duelling opponents are now located inside a storylet (“Challenge a Black Ribbon Duellist”) – so you can see all of them even if you don’t meet the requirements. (Except Captain Vendrick, who’s hidden if you don’t meet his requirements – possibly because there’s no way to satisfy his “Duelling with the Black Ribbon 2-5” requirement if you’ve already killed him, which sets that to 6.)
However, what’s odd now is that in that storylet, all the branches have a requirement of Running Battle… 5 even though they’re all redirects that go to a duellist-specific storylet which always has a higher Running Battle… requirement. This disjuncture isn’t really needed anymore now that they’re all branches – if they’re set to be visible even without the necessary requirements (and they appear to be set that way, except for Vendrick) then they could all have their proper Running Battle… 8 through 15 requirements and still be visible. The setup Optimatum is talking about makes more sense for storylets at the root level (like Rob the Bazaar and Rob the Brass Embassy are in the Flit.)
I went through the Black Ribbon story line again, and while I was not able to have a friendly duel with Captain Vendrick (either because I had dinner with Feducci before getting to the captain, or some thing from my last time through - although I don’t think I fought him last time. Perhaps because I already had two black ribbons?) when I killed him it raised my A Fearsome Duellist quality to 5, which autofires a new card which increased my A Name Scrawled in Blood (more Dangerous increase - thank you Failbetter Games).
I’ve noticed it with opportunity cards as well. It makes sense, of course, that storylets would appear and disappear depending on requirements, considering how many of them there are in total.
Colonel Pommery does require "Running Battle… 5", but he’s the only one.
That was my point, thank you. Now we understand each other.
I had 2 black ribbons and was able to fight Vendrick to the death once more. Did you not fight the captain’s Drowny girl? I think her true-death is what triggers Vendrick’s interest in challenging you to the death. But perhaps you should have still been allowed a friendly duel, other requirements permitting. (It has a wounds lock-out, for example.)
I had 2 black ribbons and was able to fight Vendrick to the death once more. Did you not fight the captain’s Drowny girl? I think her true-death is what triggers Vendrick’s interest in challenging you to the death. But perhaps you should have still been allowed a friendly duel, other requirements permitting. (It has a wounds lock-out, for example.)[/quote]
Ah, gotcha. When I entered the Dangerous tracker, my Duelling with the Black Ribbon quality wasn’t changed – it stayed at 6, which is the value you have if you’ve already killed Captain Vendrick. So I skipped right over the whole section with the Drownies, getting that assignment from Feducci, and can’t duel Captain Vendrick again either.
Maybe this is different depending on which point in the tracker you select? (I went all the way back to the beginning; my Fearsome Duellist and Procurer of Savage Beasts qualities didn’t change either, because they were below 5 – but above 0, so I also skip over some of the early duels / hunts.)
edited by metasynthie on 9/26/2015
Going back to the beginning probably should have reset your Black Ribbon quality too. That may have been an oversight or a bug in your specific set of circumstances. I had hoped my Veteran of the battle at the docks was going to be reset but also it wasn’t, despite the Dangerous tracker choice saying you will decide the battle [again]. This transition is still a bit finicky, but the more feedback we send to Failbetter the neater it gets I guess.
Some feedback here. I’m a POSI that reset my progress to replay the dangerous content I’ve already forgotten.
The lower branch of Dangerous revamp was perfect, straightforward, not too grindy, with interesting story and good rewards.
However, starting with Black Ribbon, it gets very confusing and incredibly grindy.
Firstly, it’s very hard to see what you need to do to progress to the next part of the content (level Duellist to 5 by repeatedly beating different duellists). It’s only vaguely stated in the title of the main grind storylet. I think it would be best to state directly during the conversation with Feducci that to progress to the next stage you need to beat every Black Ribbon opponent in order, by grinding fighting quality via a storylet.
Secondly, it takes ages to beat a single opponent. It literally takes days of grind (hundreds of AP) to even fight them, and it can take up to a week of mindless and mostly profitless grinding (even without menaces) to beat them and move to the next stage.
Worst of all, once you progress to the Obtaining the Beasts, it’s the same thing all over again. You don’t use your AP to do anything interesting and meaningful, it’s just a painful grind with the same options and annoying menaces.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me and I forgot how grindy middle-to-end-game is, but it was a little exhausting.
When I completed Dangerous for the first time before revamp, I’ve been satisfied by beating Feducci, obtaining my quality and moving on to labirynth of tigers (which is fun). Right now I’ll probably spend another week grinding hunting to fight all the beasts pre-labirynth.
I can see a lot of players dropping the game once they encounter this part of the content and I think the amount of AP spent grinding battle qualities could be adjusted.
edited by Danko on 9/28/2015
You dont need to duel every person in the black ribbon. Dueling mr inch twice and then feducci is enough to pass this section. I thought the capturing beasts for mr inch was worse honestly, grinding, and the best options destroy your quirks.