Returning after a two year absence

It has been a long time.

A very long time.

Over two years in fact.

I’ve decided to return, in large part because grad school is over with, and i was browsing through my old bookmarks to find this gem. I can only imagine how much more has happened in Fallen London. Last I left off we were just taking to the Underzea, and in fact my charecter may be stuck on some island, Polythreme perhaps… I believe my pants is actively kidnapping me.

I wish to know a few things.

My charecter was 130s-140s before my sojourn. What is the level caps at now?
2)
Are our ambitions completed (particularly Heart’s Desire)?
3)
I noticed I guessed 11 of mysteries correct (it appears i shall never remember just which ones I got), do we have other mysteries now? and… does that mean the game has ended?
4)
What has happened to Fallen London, in the game-meta sense? Has it completed and is done? Or has it completed and little additional stories are trickling in? Or… is it still growing beyond it’s goal of level cap goal 200 that i remember?
5) Eaten.

5.A)
Have i thrown my main off a preverbial cliff, IE, he is Eaten 8 (stains, scarred and chained), would it be safe to assume on him that I’ve… scarred myself permanently? I do not remember… I thought I stopped on him before i did anything…horrific… but given the rank… I fear I may of done something unspeakable.

There’s a big giant announcement on my screen before i can proceed warning me about it.
5.B)
Should i decline the Eaten path message, will I be refunded anything i’ve lost so far? Or is it just a giant reminder that this is NOT A GOOD IDEA? and just reinforces the fact that it’s not a good idea.
5.C)
If i continue on the path, how much can i expect it to inferfere with the game as it is now? As it was before it only became a bit of an inconvenience around certain quest lines… It’s rather hard to court the Masters when you’re actively digging into THINGS BEST NOT KNOWN… but will this actively wreck my stuffing on my ambition and Fallen London fun? Or will it continue to be a stand-alone-ish experience, that only ruins my day as i continue to pursue it? (it only hurts when i take steps, but doesn’t hurt when you’re ‘paused’ on a step) or will it actively drain the fun to the world, just by being in a state of name seeking?

Overgoat.

Is that still as much if a awesome deal as i remember it? I remember working my way to it, and I believe i could of liquidated most of my inventory and gotten it… Is it still a good idea?

  1. 200 in each stat is the new cap.

  2. Ambitions are not complete, though a couple received updates and the other two are going to be updated soon. Heart’s Desire and Light Fingers are the two waiting.

  3. There aren’t any new mysteries to answer, but the game isn’t over either.

  4. Fallen London isn’t finished (as mentioned in 3), so more stories will be added as time goes on.

5a) The damage is permanent if you decide to continue the search. Maybe even if you opt out now.

5b) Unfortunately the wiki doesn’t have that information. I’m not sure if opting out will restore your character to what it was before the Scar/Chain/Stain mess.

5c) Mr Eaten content is currently being revised, so it won’t interfere much at all. Before the content was taken down there was a card you couldn’t discard, but not all the options there are bad. If you had a St. Arthur Candle other Seekers could take your Prize Tokens, but that’s really not a big deal. There was another thing that let Seekers steal some Searing Enigmas, which is a big deal, but I don’t think many Seekers attacked one another except in instances where the other party consented.

  1. The Overgoat is still cool. Though now if you manage to get two of them something neat will turn up on the Overgoat card.

I know there’s a fate locked way to remove the scars so I doubt you’ll get them removed if you opt out.

Thank you Sara and Worm.

Yeah after looking back at my character… it seems i collected 7x of the scars chains and stains… but i don’t think i turned them in. Which is…good? (Can having such a thing be good, even in London?)

I may make a trip over to my wiki… it’s been simply so long all my details are fuzzy beyond recollection… was surprised to see a lot of it seems still frozen in time from when i was cataloging…

Good news though! My alt, the lucky questionable… thing… it is still has it’s salt weasel! Which I remember was AWESOME to get. Perhaps that’s why on him I haven’t done much on him on the Seeker series…
edited by armadaos on 2/17/2015

i also took a looooong absence though i returned last year, and everything was very new and different! but it was lots of fun catching up - i started an alt for the purpose of refamiliarizing myself with the changed game and reminding myself of early content, and i had to look up some stuff in the wiki a lot for things i was in the middle of, but it was really worth it.

anyway sara has answered all your questions (as she’s brilliant that way) but welcome back to london! polythreme will be important for hearts desire, so familiarize yourself with it before sailing home.

I didn’t pursue the Name, but the option to give up never made sense for me.

if you change your mind and want to go on one day, you just wasted a lot of effort.
If you care about the damage from the Search, giving up doesn’t help at all either.

One thing i’ve rapidly noticed… is just how ‘intense’ all this is.

There’s new professions… and lots of new weird rolling features. ‘airs of london’ business… add that with Counting the Days, and other ‘persistent’ qualities… it can be very intimidating just how many plates are spinning at once, and I don’t know which is even which.

There also seems to be a LOT of low level storylines that keep appearing in areas, that i’ve long since moved past… skill 30-70 stuff, I remember when I visited Veil there only used to be a handful of storylines i could ‘see’ anymore, most of which was the relatively new Unfinished Business, and the luck or connected storylines… but now i’ve got all kinds of visible storylets… most of which i’ve already done! Let seducing the honey sipping heiress or jewel theif… In fact i’m even getting oppertunity cards for storylines i’ve thought I had long since finished…

Also it seems they’ve really ‘loosened’ the range from being impossible to being straightforward… i used to be, perhaps a 10 point band? Now I can’t even figure out how far the band is… if it’s modest, it’ll be modest for quite some time.

All in all… very intense everything now. So much is being thrown at you, so many qualities which may or may not matter. So many storylines coming up again and again, stuff you think you’ve done, but haven’t… or stuff you have done and it’s not going away! There’s so much on the screen now… it’s hard for me to digest coming back what’s going on with my qualities, of storylet progresses let alone digest some of the story and the narrative…
edited by armadaos on 2/22/2015

The difficulty bands have expanded (see here if you like math: http://fallenlondon.wikia.com/wiki/Broad_difficulty )
I’d almost suggest starting an alternate character. The game does start you off fairly easy, and if you’ve been gone for a couple of years then you can probably enjoy a lot of content as though it were new.

Higher level professions are good, but you need notability for them. Notability is, um, complicated. I’d suggest searching for ‘notability’ and ‘making waves’ on the forums when you’re ready. Quitting a profession is easy (write a letter in your lodgings).

The low level storylets in the beginner areas were locked out because (I think) they cluttered up the page. Now there’s a random number of them available, and the randomiser is the ‘airs of London’ - different airs gives you different storylets. Less cluttered, more engaging.