I have a high level Alt character (All base stats at 230 and finished with the railroad) who has never even started an ambition. Which ambition would you recommend he complete and why? With my main character, I did the Light Fingers ambition so I do not want to repeat that one.
I am not at all into role playing of the characters nor do I care that much about the writing of the story. Mostly I care about the ease of completion, time it takes to complete, and the rewards for completing the ambition.
If this topic has been discussed elsewhere, my apology and please direct me to that place. Thanks.
This Alt character is a Monster Hunter if that makes any difference and I do not particularly want to go through the hassle of changing professions.
At that level, if you don’t care about story they’re mostly equal all things considered. Bag a Legend is probably the only one with any real tangible effects for you that late in the game.
If all you care about is rewards, you should definitely play Heart’s Desire, which has by far the most mechanical rewards than any other Ambition. As far as ease of completion and time to complete, Light Fingers is probably the best, but you already did that one. Since your character is quite late-game, you probably have the big requirements in Heart’s Desire already (5-card lodgings, high dream qualities) so it will be faster for that character than the typical starting player.
I have the 5-card lodging but I have neglected my dream qualities. I just started raising those a few days ago rather than discarding every dream card that came along because I did not want to be bothered getting my nightmares back down so frequently.
I would still say Heart’s Desire because of how many advanced stat items you get, but of course Bag a Legend gives you a 3 BDR weapons which is really good so that might outweigh everything HD gives you.
EDIT: I just noticed that HD has the only ambition tie-in with Monster Hunters, so that could be an added bit of incentive for your Monster-Hunter character.
Personally I loved HD but I think the mechanical rewards are most valuable in setting up late game stuff, not in closing a gap. I would think the Vake steed is probably best post railway for its use in the City in Silver, no?
Do any of the ambitions have a final treasure that provides +1 or better to Monstrous Anatomy and a boost to Watchful? My biggest frustration in the game with this character is having to switch a bunch of gear in the “Business of a Monster Hunter” which I do a LOT as this is my main grind, sub section = “Hunt that which wears a human face” in order to get high percent chances to pass. If I could get just +1 more Monstrous Anat. and some additional Watchful, it would be really nice.
Nemesis: There are 5 treasures for this ambition but 4 of them are just flavor differences based on who you lost. If you spare Mr. Cups (killing him provides the other, mechanically unique treasure) you receive the corresponding lost loved one as a returned revenant with a +6 watchful, although it is admittedly um. A grim ending to say the least. (All of Nemesis’s ends are grim though.)
There’s a bit where you have to travel down the Writhing River, that river in Parabola that is actually a bunch of snakes. It normally costs 10 antique mysteries, but monster hunters can pay only 6 antique mysteries and 50 zee-stories, which isn’t a great saving but the text is interesting and you get 11 cp of Docks renown into the bargain.
Ease of completion != Nemesis (unless you have the tens-of-thousands of spare echoes to get through Knifegate, which, to be fair, you might have at this point).
robm, Please pardon my confusion. Are you saying that the Nemesis ambition is the more difficult to complete because of the need for tens of thousands of echoes to complete a step in this ambition called “knifegate”?
Yes, it’s horrific. As HexBeloved said, there’s a step that needs you to buy a lot of knives (Is This The Dagger?), which requires a lot of Rat Shillings, or even more Echoes, and only gives you a 20% chance of success…
I enjoyed Nemesis (and it’s arguably given my character further motivation so I’m at least invested in continuing to play), but that step is just miserable, so if you’re in it for the rewards and the ease of completion, that’s not the ambition for you.
Thanks everyone who replied. I am going to go with Bag a Legend because of the +2 Monstrous Anatomy end prize and because it seems to fit well with my alt character being a monster hunter.
The good news is that I finished my ambition 2 days ago so it took me about 15-16 days from start to finish. The only painful parts were waiting to get the special wine (something absinthe, I think) and the ~3-4 days it took me to grind an impossible theorem.
The bad news is that I did not get the ending I was trying for. I wanted the Vake steed and thought (mistakenly) that I had arranged to obtain this. I saved the correct Vake version to deal with last and was planning to not kill this version to obtain the Vake steed. Unfortunately, there was some offshoot in Parabola that I needed to take called something like, “Think in the midst of the hunt” and only by taking this option are you given the chance to not kill the last version of the Vake. This was not apparent to me so I ended up with no choice but to kill the 3rd Vake version (Curator Vake).
It probably says this in the BaL guide in the FL Wiki that I was following but I did not see it so I did not get the Vake steed
