I’m afraid I don’t follow. I’ve looked several times to see what you’re referring to but I think I’m perhaps misunderstanding.
Major Update!
[color=#ffff66]-- Play Maelstrom here! --[/color]
The next phase of Maelstrom is now LIVE! You are free to travel the skies and land upon two new islands - the bountiful agricultural island of Greengrass and Capital (also known as Terrisel Isle), the heart of the republic!
Watch out when travelling - should your ship become too damaged (high Hull Damage) or your crew grow unruly (high Dissent) you will suffer grave - if entertaining - consequences!
More content will be released as I go along in future, now that the core structure is in place. Look for intrigue, politics, mystery, battle and more in the coming days and weeks.
Enjoy and safe flying! =)
Dear Lily!
I really enjoyed the first part of Maelstrom, so I am very excited about the new chapter!
If you’re interested in my feedback as a player, please see below, otherwise - thank you very much for writing this very interesting world!
I like the journey mechanics and the events added so far (I guess that events during sailing will be one of the most extended and colorful parts of the world). I think that adding an occasional “must” card to the Sometimes deck is a very good idea as well.
Finally, a few points that I’d suggest looking at:
- I just arrived at the capital, sold all my common clothes that I brought with me and I have no idea how to leave the Capital.[/li][li]The formatting of the results of the actions show some strange URLs which break the layout of the page. I have an example screenshot, but I don’t know how to attach it here. I’ll try messaging you privately.[/li][li]In one of your earlier posts you said that it should be possible to increase one of the character attributes when leaving the initial port. I didn’t find this branch (it might have been my fault, but on the other hand it’d be nice if it was very easy to find).[/li][li]When leaving the initial port I had no idea how many provisions I should take with me. Some suggestions could be very useful, so that people won’t leave with too few or too many.
Overall, I really like the world and I congratulate you on the job very nicely done. I’m looking forward to more! Please let me know how else apart from giving feedback I could help.
Xiaur
Hi again, Xiaur. =)
You can now leave Capital from the Capital Docks pinned card - apparently I’d overlooked that one when removing Key of Dreams reqs. Sorry for the confusion there.
Ugh, I thought I’d already released the levelling up ability. It appears I’ve made a mistake here, but I’lll fix that. If you don’t see a Level Up! screen by tomorrow, tell me.
Suggestion on the number of provisions - got it, will do.
Okay, just put in a fix for anyone who has acquired their ship already and not levelled up. You should see a storylet that fixes that error, and then see the level-up storylet.
Leveled up, but now I have no pinned cards.
Sam - There appears to be a bug which I suspect is server-side. I’m about to PM you a fix.
Dear Lily!
Thank you very much for all very quick fixes. Now I was able to level up and became master and commander of the high seas, or skies rather. I also see a suggestion on the amount of provisions in the card which allows me to leave the Capital.
I noticed one more thing which you might be interested in: the number of my crew members is 96. It happened before the release of the new chapter, I was able to get 6 more folks from the cells when I already had a crew of 90. It may have been fixed by now. From what I see in the world creation tools, the way to fix it is to copy the branch twice and make one available when your crew is 84 or less in which case success yields you 6 more crew members, and the other branch is available when your crew is in between 85 and 89, in which case success sets the number to 90. Or is there a better approach?
Also, my suggestion is that it’d be easier if the branch was hidden completely if the crew is already at 90 and there was another way of getting out of this card (a new branch like “Ignore the Opportunity” or something like that).
And I sent the screenshots with strange formatting problems to the Storynexus support.
I hope this is helpful.
Kind regards,
Xiaur
Just a small note: The “Surgery” card has no way to discard it if one is low on funds. For example, if one is flipping cards to try and raise funds to get more provisions.
Xiaur - That sailors solution is ingenious in its simplicity and I will be implementing it. While on the subject, it’s worth noting that gaining crew from the cells has been reduced to 3 at a time.
Urthdigger - That is the Capital version of the Surgery card, I think. The Portdown one has a free ‘observe a lecture’ but when I added a fee to the prestigious Capital lectures, I didn’t consider the problem you describe. I’ll sort that out.
Important: I’ve put in place storylets to catch you should you fall between worlds, as it where, in an accidental and meaningless Area/Setting combination. You’ll be deposited back to Portdown for no cost.
I’ve also removed any action cost from bug-fixing storylets like that and from the level up storylet.
And a reminder: I highly recommend following @MaelstromSN on Twitter for all the important and up-to-date news and updates announcements.
I wonder if perhaps there should be more trade options available to a starting player. After finally scraping together enough coins to buy 5 crates of common clothes, I set off for Capitol. I was disappointed to find that I only obtained a profit of 65 coins: Not even enough to cover the cost in provisions of the trip, and even barring the cost of the trip I can get almost as much from a variety of cards, meaning it’s almost not even worth the time spent selling it. Since it would seem the main point of sailing between islands is to sell goods, one would hope for a higher return than that. Saving up to buy fine food in Capital is an option, but that’s over twice the cost… and I’m only hoping the net profit is higher. There’s also the possibility of the third island, which I’ve yet to go to, but as it takes more progress to reach, I am assuming that it is even less of a newbie zone… and in either case, that means a lot more provisions spent.
Essentially, what this means is a player needs to sit around town flipping the same cards until they save up a good 1000 coins or so before trading is even worth it. Which is a bit of a grind to push onto a player pretty much right at the start.
edited by Urthdigger on 11/25/2012
I have discovered what I can only hope is a glitch. After several trade runs I had saved up enough coin to purchase five crates of weapons from Portdown. The listed cost was 4000 pounds. I had nearly 5000, yet when I bought the weapons it took all of my money. Most annoying.
Sorry about that, William. It looks like that was accidentally charging you twice the usual sum. The bug has been fixed, but that can’t bring back your missing cash, can it? But I imagine you do not have a certain rare item… check your private messages for a parcel.
Oh, and be careful you do not fill your hold up with arms you cannot sell anywhere. The islands of Steppeholt and the Rock are in need, but as yet not reachable by your charts.
Hmm, guess I’m going to have to hurry up and craft some way to profit from them. =)
Foolish of me, of course, but I didn’t except anyone to get that much money for a while. For now I’m walling off branches for purchasing trade goods which have no options to sell on the three islands currently available.
Tomorrow I will add an option to discard trade goods at any time. I’ll also look into a way for you to sell such items for their purchase price closer to home. Hopefully you won’t be stuck with unmovable cargo for too long.
I cannot guess, however, at how long Steppeholt and The Rock may be.
There is a new trader in open skies! If you are short of provisions or have a shipment of arms, keep a weather eye open for the Honesty.
This is the first roaming trader available in Maelstrom. I haven’t yet decided how they’ll work, but each will likely be limited to a region of sky. Should you visit the Weislay Empire, for example, you won’t find Mr. Loame there. Unless he’s done something incredibly foolish, at least.
I recommend doublechecking anything and everything that deals with alterations to the cargo space quality. I was missing 1 space for the past few trips but wrote it off as my imagination. I now have only 8 spaces remaining, despite the only cargo items I possess being 11 provisions and 5 sacks of common clothes.
Last business was selling a very large pile of fine clothes to Greengrass before I closed my browser for a bit. Come back, buy some provisions, and wham: distinct shortage of cargo space.
If it matters I do have some hull damage, but that doesn’t seem to have been an issue for a while now.
Speaking of which, ports should probably offer a drydock service for repairs. Possibly with the option to provide your own wood for the repairs. The extended shore leave could be a nice way to shave off a little Dissent too.
Oh dear… that really is the worst kind of oversight. You are right - the branches to sell Fine Clothes were not returning Cargo Space.
I have sent you a private message with an access code that will reset your cargo and cargo space. Be sure to sell what you can before using it.
ANY ONE ELSE WHO HAS SOLD FINE CLOTHES AT GREENGRASS - PLEASE REPLY BELOW AND I WILL MAKE THE SAME SOLUTION AVAILABLE TO YOU
Please accept my sincere apologies for this error, and thank you for sticking with the game regardless.
I could use said fix.
William - PM sent.