New Event: Gently 'Cross the Zee

lwe-bomb

Your crew groan as an island heaves into view, guarded by a mouth of snaggling rocks. Your ship could endure their bite on better days. Today, you have no room for mistakes.

A lost ship has been sighted off Wolfstack Docks – absent its crew, but very much present a hold full of improperly stored, highly unstable explosives. The Admiralty is calling for inadvisably fearless zee captains to transport the cargo to a decommissioning site.

Arrange to pick up your own shipment of volatile cargo from Your Cabin when moored in London. Try not to blow up.

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Alright! I missed the last zee event (my MA was too low at the time)so this is a first! I think my zailing abilities are pretty good, so let’s see how this goes. I mean, it’s only the stormbones-how bad could it be? I say, knowing the answer is “very”.

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I’ll be amused if Corsairing is actually optimal for making the journey simply by opening up new potential checks to succeed at.

Update: HELL’S BELLS THAT WAS CLOSE thank goodness for unaccounted Strong-Backed Labour, and I’m fairly certain Corsairing does NOT, at least, matter meaningfully for the greatest challenge.

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Your starting Volatility is your current Troubled Waters, so Corsairing matters only insofar as it builds that up.

Just so y’all are aware: if you pack the maximum load, the Zeefaring challenges are harder than the Snares. I also only survived thanks to some spare Strong-Backed Labor, and intend to pack a few more before I do this again more than mediumly dangerous.

The writing is hilarious. Well done.

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… I totally agree. thank you.

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I severely underestimated the difficulty of carrying all the explosives I could. I have Zeefaring 11 and all the damn checks are TEN PERCENT

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I just went 2/2 in passing 10% Zeefaring checks. A rare RNG blessing!

The mechanics are REALLY good at induce sweating terror!

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There’s a new Quality Level Descriptor along with this new type of event, which I’m sure someone is going to take to 77 ASAP, if not 777.

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That was a fun ride. I didn’t go for the highest shipment because I like having checks I can pass, but even then the final 70% Zeefaring check got me worried.

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I did the easiest one, with the final Zeefaring challenge at 80%.

I received a Salt Steppe Atlas for my troubles. Now heading back to London.

May I know what rewards are given for the medium difficulty and the hardest one?

And what happens when the cargo explodes? Straight visit to the Boatman?

Edit: FYI, I’m a Monster Hunter, a pirate on the seas, and travelling on the Nyx-class Zub. These might help a teeny weeny bit against the RNG gods.

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Off the top my head, I remember getting Zee Stories, Unlawful Devices, Tales of Terror and Partial Maps of top of the Atlas.

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One does wonder whether London’s Admiralty can actually do anything on its own.

Because no matter what the mess is exactly, you can be sure about one thing: the Admiralty will ask for fearless citizens to “help” clean it up.

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The Admiralty says they are dumping explosives into a nautical obliette. But … am I the only one who thinks that they’re bombing Deep Ones?

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same. this was hard! not snares hard, but pretty close!

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An opportunity to bribe the Fathom King in a small and pointless way, followed by a boat trip. Very annoying and tedious (this was the medium one).

Excited to enact William Friedkin’s “Neathy Sorcerer” (or Le Salaire Souterrain de la Peur if you prefer the original). Being able to survive getting exploded does remove some of the suspense, but it’s still fun! Love the writing, although I feel that if someone dies in the course of delivery they should get a few Tales of Terror as a consolation prize. Successful or not, the story’s gotta be worth something, surely.

After scraping through two Hard runs, I think the Medium difficulty suits me fine – being able to guarantee the success on the early-finish Card that shows up at 5/8 progress feels like it more than makes up for the lost profit of 20 Echoes or so, and then I’m also not worried about a bit of piracy on the way up there.

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I LOVE this. And I say that as someone who’s first experience with it was filling my ship to the brim, getting five troubled waters on my way, and promptly exploding. It is very fun, and the imminent death introduces an element of tension not usually found in FL that I like. I do think that some of the more Revolutionary elements might be benefited by the giant ship full of bombs that is sitting right next to Mr Fires’ office, but I’m glad that they aren’t!

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If the ship doesn’t get offloaded soon enough, will there be in-game consequences to Wolfstack? I rather hope so.

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Or arming something in the depths.

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The medium difficulty rewards that I received were:
1 salt step atlas
5 partial maps
2 unlawful devices
16 zee-ztory
1 puzzling map
11 tales of terror

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