I do the same, except I recycle the Rumours of the Upper River into Prismatic Ribcages which are almost as good for attaching thighs of St. Fiacre.
Which challenges do generals make easier anyway?
edited by NNNnobody on 5/2/2021
Which challenges do generals make easier anyway?
edited by NNNnobody on 5/2/2021[/quote]
Our fearless Wiki editors have been trying to map that out for a while. It was/is not easy.
Here is the example for the Chess General :
For instance, it reduces the "deploy counter Phantasies" challenge by 3 times the value of your chess general.
What I’ve heard is that the chess general helps with Watchful challenges, the cat general helps with Shadowy challenges, and the snake general helps with Persuasive challenges.
A catalogue of all the actions on the campaign trail, including which ones are affected by which general, is compiled in the guide on the wiki: Parabolan War (Guide) - Fallen London Wiki
Broadly speaking PJ is correct that the Generals align to stats, although there is one exception. There was a bug on release that made cataloguing all these effects difficult. I believe it’s all accurate now, but trust your own eyes over the Wiki.
They just nerfed morale-based campaigning to Hell and back. What’s the new meta? Is it even worth bothering with wars anymore?
We’ll, I didn’t run the numbers, but the nerf looks significant. Need to assess if other grinds were nerfed as well. For now the War only makes sense for specific items, like Waswood Almanach
edited by Wojciech on 6/17/2021
[quote=Wojciech]We’ll, I didn’t run the numbers, but the nerf looks significant. Need to assess if other grinds were nerfed as well. For now the War only makes sense for specific items, like Waswood Almanach
edited by Wojciech on 6/17/2021[/quote]
The nerf to Parabolan War is beyond ridiculous.
You can now cash 5 morale for 5 advance (was previously 3 for 6 respectively). And additionally, there is a morale cap of 18. The end result is the EPA for Parabolan War went from a out 5 to about 3.5. It’s now a worse option than the newspaper (LOL). I honestly don’t know what FB is thinking, but I think at this point they should provide some guidance as to what they are shooting for in terms of EPA / economy for midgame / endgame grinds an opportunity cards.
Cause right now midgame grinds are better than endgame, which seems to completely defeat the feeling of progression as you spend a vast amount of resources on endgame stuff like lab, railway, base camp.
It’s not in a good place at all, IMO.
[quote=Marcusi]
You can now cash 5 morale for 5 advance (was previously 3 for 6 respectively). And additionally, there is a morale cap of 18. [/quote]
I’m certain I’ve seen today a cap of 24, and exchange ratio of 5 morale for 6 advance. Which is still ridiculous. But perhaps it’s dynamic in some interesting way?..
Upd: Yes, it seems the amount of Advance you get depends on the Stage of war.
edited by Wojciech on 6/17/2021
So war is a trash grind now. What still works, anything good besides mammoth ranching?
Mammoth Ranching was also nerfed into oblivion, along with Painting/Moonlit.
I really don’t get was FB sees as accetpable return in endgame grinds. If it’s only 3.5-3.8 then that’s not really a progression from the midgame, and certainly not worth the investment of resources into Lab, Railway, Base Camp except on a scale of years, lol.
What seems fair to me would be in the 4 range for endgame grings, with opportunity cards being in the 5 range. But I dunno. It’s very frustrating as a player to ksay the least.
Very frankly, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, even on the Opportunity Cards.
For example, Assisting the Old Man gives 4 Echo worth of Rostygold, while Tomb-Colonist Tour with maxed-out railway only gives 3.3 Echo worth of Moonpearls. What’s the idea behind that?..
[quote=Marcusi] I honestly don’t know what FB is thinking, but I think at this point they should provide some guidance as to what they are shooting for in terms of EPA / economy for midgame / endgame grinds an opportunity cards.
Cause right now midgame grinds are better than endgame, which seems to completely defeat the feeling of progression as you spend a vast amount of resources on endgame stuff like lab, railway, base camp.
It’s not in a good place at all, IMO.[/quote]
Remembering their recent decision history, I doubt they have any idea of what they’re actually shooting for, beyond "let’s nerf every recent thing we made generous". Although I suspect it’s part of preparation for Zeefaring - nerf finished new content, bump new new content, force people to play it anyway (until you nerf that too), and disregard old content because they don’t even bother with it.
I just hate how if your favored style of grind is “Maybe not as much EPA as the involved grinds, but at least it’s mindless”, there’s nothing left. Math people do the involved grinds, the devs ruin the non involved grinds, and now only the math people have their super involved grinds. More casual players just get punished for it.
I’ve been playing for ten years and I’m going back to midgame level grinds for echoes. Remember when the train assumed you were in it for the money? And all it’s done is suck money end to end?
It’s all frustrating.
It does feel like every time an activity with a fairly consistent 4.5+ EpA comes around due to new content (Advanced lab grinds, early Helicon House, Balmoral larcenies, etc.), Failbetter leaves it until new content comes around and then just sweeps it under the rug. There needs to be decent distinction between mid-game grinds and end-game grinds, otherwise it feels as if there’s no payoff for all the time and resources invested.
I feel like Failbetter needs to come out and say, "Late game EpA is expected to be around [insert amount]" and just focus on distributing resources based around that. That way, any time a new grind is found with an EpA higher than that, we’ll know from the very start that it will eventually be nerfed rather than this current roller-coaster we’re currently on.
[quote=MidnightVoyager]I’ve been playing for ten years and I’m going back to midgame level grinds for echoes. Remember when the train assumed you were in it for the money? And all it’s done is suck money end to end?
It’s all frustrating.[/quote]This sums it up fairly well. If you’ve made it through to end-game, finished ambition, finished railway, dumped so many thousand Echoes into it by this point, you should be able to have a decent grind, no? Not something any mid-game player can do. Especially if said grind requires other high-level requirements. Wheres the payback for the countless Echoes dumped into getting so far?
Kind of seems like a slap in the face and makes me doubt if I want to continue spending real-world money.
Edit: Being that I mostly spent my extra actions on grinding Echoes, I’ve opted not to continue my Exceptional Friend status for now. Since I’m essentially end-game, I see no point in paying the monthly fee if I can’t utilize my actions anymore. I know I’m only one person, but maybe FB will realize how poorly thought out some of these nerfs were.
edited by idyl on 6/18/2021
edited by idyl on 6/20/2021
[quote=Mulligan]
I feel like Failbetter needs to come out and say, "Late game EpA is expected to be around [insert amount]" and just focus on distributing resources based around that. That way, any time a new grind is found with an EpA higher than that, we’ll know from the very start that it will eventually be nerfed rather than this current roller-coaster we’re currently on.[/quote]
Well, now you know that everything higher than 4 EpA will be nerfed. Except if it’s weekly activity (bone market exhaustion for example) or card based (Arbor)
It’s just weird how they keep introducing every new thing like “Here, enjoy!” and then after a short while they inevitably go “Oh no we made it too good NERF NERF NERF”. It keeps happening over and over.
Clearly the thing to do as a player is to consider each good new grind a temporary thing and milk it for all it’s worth before it gets snatched away.
[quote=Tsar Koschei]
Clearly the thing to do as a player is to consider each good new grind a temporary thing and milk it for all it’s worth before it gets snatched away.[/quote]
You’re right, but it’s a bit frustrating. I honestly would have not minded a light tuning down of best grinds… but some of them were rendered utterly useless as grinds.
Too drastic, in a manner or the other.
Last time I felt emotions of this kind were years ago when I played MMORPG (WoW) and they nerfed a class or another with every update, but - holy cow! - that was an online PvE/PvP game!
It’s worse than that, really, because only the very, very advanced long-term players ever get to experience the un-nerfed areas. By the time late game but average players even get there, it’s all over bar the shouting. I’m four stations in on the railway and on my second campaign in Parabola, but the former is pretty meh in terms of gains, and the latter strikes me as bloody expensive.
[quote=Tsar Koschei]It’s just weird how they keep introducing every new thing like "Here, enjoy!" and then after a short while they inevitably go "Oh no we made it too good NERF NERF NERF". It keeps happening over and over.
Clearly the thing to do as a player is to consider each good new grind a temporary thing and milk it for all it’s worth before it gets snatched away.[/quote]