Quest and objective tracking /sorting / marking

Sunless Skies
1

New player here, have only explored most of the Reach and Albion so far. I’d like to say that I love the core of this game, I was a big fan of Sunless Sea and I like a lot of the changes that came with Skies.

While the writing is as usual fantastic, and the combat has been much improved in my opinion, one area that I think could use some refinement is quests/prospects.

I was fine until working my way through Albion, but the amount of information to keep track of in the Journal and planning what to bring and where to go in what order is getting seriously overwhelming. It would be very nice to be able to sort quests by region, hide completed quests (not just minimize), and maybe highlight the ones in Journal with objectives close to you (as long as you’ve already discovered the port). I realize that too much quest marking wouldn’t be in the spirit of the game, but a little bit would go a long way.

It takes so long to get from one place to another, and it’s so resource intensive, that it’s extremely frustrating when you realize you had been right next to an objective with a turn in but now you’re all the way across the map again. (This would also be alleviated by the ability to upgrade engine speed but that’s a separate post someone has already made).

A related issue I have run into is receiving requests for things that, unbeknownst to me, I can’t get in my current region no matter how much of the map I uncover or how many ports I discover. Obviously part of the fun of the game is discovery and learning as you go, but if you’re on your first playthrough, it would be nice to have some sort of flag when, say, a Prospect is requesting an item that comes from a region you haven’t even visited yet. I thought since the first five Prospects in Albion all asked for items I could find IN Albion or the Reach, that I simply hadn’t looked hard enough for the port which would sell Bombazine, and spent a good hour scouring the map for the port I’d missed, only to wiki in desperation and find I never could have gotten it until reaching a new region.

Alternately, some sort of in-game library that could tell you where an item that has been mentioned comes from could have helped me too. I’d be happier doing the research in game than on a wiki for sure.

I hope this isn’t coming off as wanting too much hand-holding in a game that’s not about things being easy, but just a few tweaks could help us clueless noobs on our first captain reduce the guesswork. Thanks!

2

These are all reasonable ideas, and certainly the journal could use some tweaking. At the very least, putting completed quests behind some kind of barrier would be nice, and sorting quests by region would be super helpful. By the end of the game you’ve got scores of quests listed and it can be hard to remember which you accepted fifty hours earlier.

As for out-of-region items, I made a point of never accepting a prospect unless I knew a source for that item, but, yeah, there were times I got very confused–like knowing I needed Immaculate Souls for a quest in London, but having no idea where to find even one. What I will say about that is you can find those Eleutherian items in the holds of enemy locomotives–I eventually got my Immaculate Souls from the wreck of a Star-Maddened Explorer (or whatever the Albion version of that is). So don’t stop looking, but avoid pricey prospects unless you’ve got stuff in the bank (also, having a well-stocked bank for your next lineage makes this kind of chore into a breeze).

3

I would like to see more transparency in where various items come from. I’ve found that Panes of Glass are rare as hen’s teeth unless you’re very good at hunting Deranged Dreadnoughts and passing their Iron checks, and Bombazine and Gemstone bargains don’t come by often either. Maybe if there was a list of potential bargains you could sort by regions, with ones you’ve found sorting into the list and ones you haven’t showing up as mysteries.

4

Panes of Glass can be found in the Mausoleum.