having not taken on board a mute Exile at Codex and finding myself under Salts Curse, to find my sweetheart and child dead…
On the one hand, I can see the point of having penalties for getting cursed, on the other hand, with no way to prevent it, and no way to do anything about the consequences, after all, not dead at sea means you can’t get them back from the Fathomking, it seems a very strong penalty without recourse to prevention, and indeed, something that could drive a person to madness were it to occur…
Which brings the question, should there be a way to prevent or at least delay this problem, after all, if you haven’t got the means to lift the curse, you either stay out of london till you have lifted it (which could be a very long time at seven secrets price), or you’re doomed to have them die without any chance to save them…
There are those who are numerical in their approach who will say that there are ways to get another sweetheart and child, but I do believe that it’s not the point, were I my character, I would lay off the northern edge of Wither and Bomb the House of the Question till it glowed in the dark, and that would not yet be enough, I would go around the entire of the sea and wipe any trace of their shrines from it, and that would still not be enough…
There’s a story in this to be sure, I’ll start on writing it and be back to you all soon…
But still, I myself understand, I’m not sure Rocket Heeled Jack will come back from it yet…
[color=#009900]Admin edit: spoiler tag[/color] edited by Alexis on 12/8/2014
Whoa! Spoiler alert there friend… That’s a bit inconsiderate to just throw out there a major plot twist like that. A lot of players play these game to see what happens next and ruining a storylet out of frustration just isn’t necessary. Next time, leave out the details, or at least cover them up or something. :(
[li] edited by SouthSea Rutherby on 12/9/2014
[color=#009900](added spoiler tag above)[/color]
[color=#009900]
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[color=#009900]One of the Failbetter mottoes is ‘some stories end badly’. So I’m both sorry and glad that you’re upset.[/color]
Honestly? It happened to me too, and while I didn’t have a child, I was trying so hard to save Secrets up to get rid of Salts Curse at Whither. The problem is that there’s no safe way to avoid it even if one has a full crew onboard, unlike the zailor-wanna-be who uses too many "z"s. I was kind of irritated as well; could there be a way to somehow either postpone or avoid Salt’s Curse, or at least have the curse affect more than that? Maybe it makes one of your officers or crew leave, or something. There are many more ways to say farewell, after all.
I understand the frustration voiced in the above complaint, as it happened to my long-lived captain quite a while ago (and came as a real shock, too, which I think speaks to excellent game design). For some time I wondered if there might not be a way to undo the damage levied by Salt’s Curse, but in the end the good captain dealt with his grief and moved on, devoting himself to the discovery of the secrets of the Unterzee.
So while I see from a perfectionist gamer standpoint the desire to undo, delay, or prevent Salt’s Curse, in the end I must agree with Failbetter’s decision to make the consequences sudden, painful, and unavoidable. It makes the danger of Salt’s Curse real in a way that trumps the fear of death associated with being chased by Mt. Nomad, perhaps, or the threat of violence offered by the Blind Bruiser. Those dangers are understandable, brought about in a clear cause-and-effect manner: Troll about in the Northern reaches, get attacked by a scary black glass mountain. Fail to deliver the contraband, get attacked by a scary sightless thug (I’m sensing a theme…) However, the first time I incurred Salt’s wrath it was in doing something I thought could not possibly bring about such disastrous consequences. And that’s why it was such an effective game design decision. The thoughts and actions of the god of horizons cannot be comprehended or countered, and the game reflects that. Hurrah for well-wrought lore and design.
…And that’s the end of my long-winded contribution to this discussion.
Some stories may end badly, but sometimes I think they end badly too quickly.
The Brisk Campaigner. Recruit her, talk to her in London, and within 30 seconds of leaving port, her storylet leading to her death kicks off. I’m guessing because once you talk to her, the game checks your Time the Healer value and decides she’s ready?
[quote=SouthSea Rutherby]
Whoa! Spoiler alert there friend… That’s terribly inconsiderate to just throw out there a major plot twist like that. A lot of players play these game to see what happens next and ruining a storylet out of frustration just isn’t necessary. Next time, leave out the details, or at least cover them up or something. :(
[li][/quote]
Apologies, didn’t consider it at the time, and next time, I’ll do so[/li][li]
[/li][li]Thanks to the admin for putting in the spoiler alert, how do I do that myself?[/li]
[quote=Alexis Kennedy][color=#009900](added spoiler tag above)[/color]
[color=#009900]One of the Failbetter mottoes is ‘some stories end badly’. So I’m both sorry and glad that you’re upset.[/color][/quote]
Thanks for that, and I have no problem with stories ending badly, it was just sudden, there wasn’t a warning or a possibility that things could be prevented, it was just a snap and things have gone, which I appreciate reflects the real world well, but at the same time wasn’t something I was ready for today.
Good to have a one-two punch on storylines, but I don’t (and never will) agree with a sucker punch, there should be a build up to the drop and a chance to get your hands in the way at least, no one likes being smashed from behind.
What an appropriate way for Salt’s Curse to manifest! It strikes me that the only real sticking point here is the unavoidability of being cursed if one collects that intelligence with a full crew - and the resultant meta-gaming of letting a zailor be killed before completing that quest. Perhaps there should be an option to, say, trade an existing crew member for the new one, avoiding the curse in return for a higher Terror penalty?
There is something that I do to avoid Salt’s Curse at Codex but it doesn’t help if you get it elsewhere. I got it while zailing once but can’t remember the exact reason.
Once I found out the consequence of not taking the Mute Exile I don’t click onward into the choice but just leave Codex without even seeing him
Good move, and something I’ll be doing after Jack falls, now running around the sea looking for mount nomad (who seems to have vanished) and a glorious death on the waves…
Can’t really decide if game elements like this are challenging or just impish, although I suppose that’s not an either-or. Having not triggered the event myself, does Salt stuff your dead spouse in the refrigerator, as is the custom?
Maybe that’s a crass question. I know you must quickly hit diminishing returns in writing dialog for sweethearts when most players will just click through it on their London resupply checklist. It just makes the sudden tragedy seem a little un-earned, because other than passing on my own suicidal life choices and brooding on the occasional hilltop (Lord Byron Teaches Parenting) I’m not even given the option to do much for my family. Thanks for the terror reduction, babe, see you when I see you, here’s a gothic fright-mask for little Ja…little Am…for the kid.
It was bold, thematically resonant and totes legit to allow unwitting blasphemies to strike down your loved ones, but that might be the only thing elevating them above adroitly-written home furnishings.
I just got the curse and lost my family within about a minute of eachother from being lenient on a sailor stealing my sunlight, and in the same trip to london turned in a glitches port report that wiped 30 points of admiral’s favor. Yeah, it feels a little fast and harsh. Not a story going badly but a random brutal punishment with no recourse that doesn’t feel like the result of my choices but totally arbitrary. Especially after dead ending another story when I chose to protect my family… edited by KatarinaNavane on 2/4/2015
[quote=Brackenfish]
It was bold, thematically resonant and totes legit to allow unwitting blasphemies to strike down your loved ones, but that might be the only thing elevating them above adroitly-written home furnishings.[/quote]
And if you look at it like that, then the whole game could be an accounting exercise, but if you’re playing it and enjoying the narrative, then something random like this smashes the reason for the game, because the character you’re playing would be rightly devastated by the loss of the aforementioned, and herein lies the problem.
If the game is to be played as an accounting exercise, so much fuel and supplies to reach this location, so many hits of this gun to kill this creature, this sequence of events to get the captivating treasure in Visage, then fine, all you’ve lost is a mechanical function to reduce terror, but if you’re playing it as the career of a sailor out on the ocean, it’s the sort of random event that has film critics frothing, unless the sailor you refused went to your house and killed your family, in which case it makes sense, but being as how you left them on an island unable to get off it, how did they beat you back to the house and how did they find where you live…?
That would be a storyline, to find the people responsible for killing your family, but "You didn’t let someone have a free ride, so your family dies" is not…
I sympathize fellow zailors, it is a brutal punishment. I just got it about an hour ago. I was at first livid; really frustrated as I had just been able to put something aside.
But then I thought, well, that’s the problem with these chthonic gods, they really are capricious and savage.
It would be nice if the consequences are not necessarily forever, if you can meet someone else etc. Although I do believe there was some mention of a certain Machine and its proponents, perhaps they know more?
My impression as well was not that agents enacted Salt’s vengeance, but Salt itself. I decided to spit in the face of the gods after their cruelty with a quick trip to Wither and some defiant acts.
I have a connected question… is Salt’s Curse the only way yo lose the Scion legacy? Or you need to make a child at every new captain? (my first captain just died with scion, so my new one got the bonus and I saw the Scion legacy is still active, so I was wondering if you really need a new child with the new captain or it is renewed automatically at every death until you lose it)
It’s renewed automatically at every death until you lose it. You can also lose it some ways other than Salt’s Curse, but the ones I know about are pretty clearly telegraphed as game-enders and I think also lose your other persistent legacies.