So, it turns out that grinding menaces for the fool’s rewards was totally worth it, because otherwise I’d now be grinding for tears of the bazaar. I needed that for about 3 steps in my ambition past where I was. Next stop in parabola means immediate battle. My dangerous has hit 200. I have my trusty harpoon. Let’s do this!
In Birthday Fate, I am most pleased with the Roseate Antagonist and the Pirate Poet. I still haven’t played the exceptional stories I bought, and still haven’t decided on what the final two will be. Remaining fate to be saved for sacksmas. Anyway, the November ES was a lovely monstrous one, even if I did not kill the beast. The professor is very keen on killing monsters but talking animals are not necessarily monsters. Non-sapient wild animals are to be hunted, of course, and evil beings.
Questions
is there any way to reset the Jack of Smiles story? I regret the ending I chose.
Written in the Glim, and Upwards: if you’ve done both, how much overlap is there? Which one is "better" from your PoV?
Upwards is very short, with a recurring path to get bones. Written in Glim is a full, lengthy ES, the result of which is a card option at Zee. I enjoyed Wtitten in Glim more, Upwards is very short. But Upwards has useful bones. There is not much overlap at all, beyond part of it are in the same area. edited by Lady Karnstein on 11/13/2021
[quote=Lady Karnstein]Upwards is very short, with a recurring path to get bones. Written in Glim is a full, lengthy ES, the result of which is a card option at Zee. I enjoyed Wtitten in Glim more, Upwards is very short. But Upwards has useful bones. There is not much overlap at all, beyond part of it are in the same area.
[/quote]
Thanks! Written in the Glim, then, for now. I don’t rule out buying more in the future, but it will be much less at a time.
And wow, that was a wild ride just now. The Vake is nowhere remotely near being finished off, though this was a very major step. So much to do and so much to buy, I hardly know where to start. Probably back burner it while I get to Ealing, learn to play chess, and chase up some other story backlog. We’re talking thousands of echos in materials, and I have few. A reservation at the Royal Beth might help.
You can find the option of "Another round with Jack" at "Send a message to a contact". It costs 20 Fates. edited by KenShi on 11/13/2021
[quote=KenShi]You can find the option of "Another round with Jack" at "Send a message to a contact". It costs 20 Fates.
[/quote]
Thank you! And done! It’s really been bugging me that my monster hunter didn’t kill this monster. What was I thinking?
And that concludes the big birthday fate splurge.
Flint, Written in the Glim, All Things Must End, two Hallowmas companions, and reset Jack. And some left over for Xmas.
I’ve been moving on with local backlog, and have paid my first visit to the Wakeful eye (got the minister of war on my side) and sided with the "Kashmiri princess" over the box. Delighted to find it unlocks a shadowy gain grind that is just right in difficulty for me.
Well. It’s been a while and Prof Blueleg has come along well.
Over 200 in all stats except shadowy.
Built railway to Jericho and made a library.
Bought both the Beth and the Bazaar premises in the same week!
Expanded the lab ALL the way, fate finale and all.
No progress on the vake, too expensive.
Decided to take up arms with the bishop against hell, but nothing seems to have come of that yet.
I am reconsidering my wiki low-spoiler policy, after an unfortunate event in the lab. I was working on the prelapsarian red science study, which has two end points. I assumed the dream option would take some of my research and give me lore, but no, it took ALL 2700 points. OK, I got a cartographer’s hoard out of it, but I have no use for that at the moment and I did very much want the other choice, the dreadful surmise.
So, back to the grind. In future, will check wiki for all big ticket finales.
I’m also considering using my alt to investigate hell some more. Prof Al prefers to avoid devils, except to thump them.
Another add to the occasional journal. I note when I started this I said "[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)] (Railways? Parabola? Polythreme? What even ARE those?) " and now I have all of those. Am working on the route to Balmoral, have done one parabolan war campaign, and been to polythreme a couple of times.[/color]
[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]
[/color]
[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]I had my first Christmas, upgraded my Royal Beth suite, and I can’t remember anything else truly notable. Bits and pieces. My alt made a noman but didn’t get enough cards to really care that much when it melted.[/color]
[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]
[/color]
[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]The Feast of the Rose turned out to be quite frustrating. I got up to 30 masquing, and the card to spend it never appeared. I kept getting more gain options that I could not use. I even spent it on the dream of a spouse (Sinning Jenny) and gained up to 30 again. I only got to spend it when the storylet turned up. and then of course I could not gain much more except by cashing in gifts. Which was less than I could have used, because I’d got a bit demoralised and stopped sending gifts (I was meticulous about returning them but mostly stopped initiating). I regretted this even more when I found I needed multiple ushabtis for them to be useful.[/color]
[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]
[/color]
[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]I also was disappointed to find nothing much to do at the Khanate without getting to Balmoral. The Vake continues to be too wildly expensive to hunt. I never have enough warm amber for what I want. And I failed to build a dinosaur because it needed 4 legs (fossilised forelimbs seemed a good bet, I was imagining a T-rex with arms). Another wiki-check requirement, I think. And the bone market is annoying with all those constant changes of outfits. [/color]
[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]
[/color]
[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]So in being demoralised, I dropped my gameplay down - by which I mean only once or twice a day and less social action.[/color]
[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]
[/color]
[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]In good news, I am now almost ready to take on the first step to Paramount Personality, and burgling Mr Irons from Parabola is a much quicker source of railway steel than all those brawls. [/color] Perhaps Whitsun will perk me up again, too, there are things I want there.
The Bone Market, I agree, is much less fun than you’d expect. I only recently discovered that a certain level of Palaeontologist is needed for something I want to do. And after all the faff, the bl*ddy bone assemblages end up worth peanuts. And I say that as a Licentiate with a shed full of headless skeletons Grrr.
Also with you on the Feast of the Rose. I started playing long ago, just as it was beginning and couldn’t make head nor tail of it. It’s still my least favourite of all. But it sounds as if you were seriously unloved by the RNG.
From time to time, the game does lose a bit of its sheen, and when that happens, I just drop in every day to play the cards and/or do something I enjoy. In my case, that happens to be expeditions in the Forgotten Quarter. In another life, I must have been an archaeologist… ;) Or maybe a diver – diving in the basement is something I could do all day, too.
The Railway destinations are really chock-full of story. Having breezed through a fair chunk quite quickly, I’m only now discovering the hidden nooks and crannies in, e.g. Balmoral. Lots and lots to do there.
The Khanate, oddly, is a venue I find quite oppressive – which is a compliment to the writing, I guess. There’s a strong sense of being in a strange place among strangers and far from help. Give me Polythreme any day! (Never thought I’d say that).
Reading your stuff on here and elsewhere is always interesting and a pleasure - I hope you get back to enjoying the game.
I have just discovered diving in the Evenlode basement! That was a lot of fun. My Submerged Rector finally had a use! I wonder how many levels there are. The Evenlode cards are interesting too, I just picked up a lot of good bones.
I’m certainly still playing daily,and my alt most days even if only to grind for memories of light. Not quite so obsessively checking in to use every possible action, though.
Thanks for the compliment!
Going to the Khanate was useful, and only a small detour from a scientific voyage. I have enough zee legs now to make Cartographer’s Hoards, which should help purchase more items for Vake hunting.
Do you really want to go down the theorem route? There are other options. Must be, because I got past there and I don’t have a theorem. I don’t even remember it being much of a hassle. Isn’t there a "vote extra funds" option?
Yes, you can just go around. I was fortunate enough to have a theorem on-hand already, but given the option I probably would have locked myself in the lab for a week as well. It’s not every day you get an opportunity to break certain kinds of laws.
How many coins are you short right now? There are a handful of options for upgrading equipment, and depending on your current resources, building Probability Distributors might be the faster route.
Personally I begged for coins at that point as well. But I had a stock of 900+ coins to start with, plus all the other materials.
[quote=PSGarak]Yes, you can just go around. I was fortunate enough to have a theorem on-hand already, but given the option I probably would have locked myself in the lab for a week as well. It’s not every day you get an opportunity to break certain kinds of laws.
How many coins are you short right now? There are a handful of options for upgrading equipment, and depending on your current resources, building Probability Distributors might be the faster route.
Personally I begged for coins at that point as well. But I had a stock of 900+ coins to start with, plus all the other materials.[/quote]
I only have a little over 100 coins now.
How did you manage to get 900+ coins before begging back then?
A lot of folk have been playing since the railway was no more than a glint in Furnace’s eyes. It’s accessible to you fairly early on, but it hasn’t existed for long. People were playing for many years, during which they gradually amassed the coins. (After you’ve built a few stations, access to them becomes much, much easier, which doesn’t help you, unfortunately.) I have been here for four, five years now, and despite that, I am still short of 1,000 (and my lab isn’t that developed, either.)
Extra costs for the railway are not hard to eliminate as you proceed – there is an option you can set up at the very first station. So do give thought to the alternative solution.
Otherwise, at 30 coins a pop, you’re expecting a great deal of kindness from many, many strangers.
If you’ve finished Heart’s Desire you’ll have won several hundred of them from the other players.
If you’re closest to Bohemians or Great Game, and meet a few other criteria, you can grind Counting the Days without cards (other than the final Secrets and Spending card), getting 20 coins per cycle
[quote=Bluestocking]
I’m building to Balmoral at the moment. Expensive, but raiding Mr Irons makes the steel much easier than endless brawls.
I can’t remember exactly how I upgraded my lab, apart from a zillion memories of light and working rats, but I don’t remember coins. A new option?[/quote]
Balmoral is fun – lots to do there. I’ve come back to it a couple of times. And re. the lab, you may well have done the extra aleatory methods listed elsewhere. It took less than a week, as I recall.
My alt completed his level 5 laboratory upgrade by designing his own aleatory methods. He assigned his meticulous students to publish mirthless compendiums of statistical observations. Improved reputation among academics allows him to recruit profound students who prefer nightsoil of certain inhabitant of the Neath as farewell gifts. As he began the project of the impossible theorem, he already had the visionary students at his disposal.
Oh right, that’s what I did. My own aleatory methods. My lab has been fully upgraded for sometime, and my alt just has a shifty student and a numismatrix and no equipment or reputation to speak of. edited by Bluestocking on 3/30/2022