I’m afraid I’m a little lost here. The story seems to have ended without reward? I brought back the coffin, with the freshly dead son inside, and don’t recall getting a specific reward. Is there an opportunity card I’m waiting for, or have I missed something?
You will have got Ratskin boots from killing him, which can be sold for a decent-ish sum if you don’t want to use them, I think.
Ah, that was it. Thanks.
“Enjoy your tea.”
I believe I shall.
I quite enjoyed the time in the NORTH and lifeberg, and I really liked the story of this month’s E.S.
I’m pretty disappointed that I didn’t know about the hidden content, though. I don’t tend to check the wiki before I play a story, so I didn’t know I needed to stay with the lifeberg until the secret content opened up for me.
So, I’m frustrated that I completely missed out on it. It seems unfair to hide stuff in paid content, so I can’t go back and catch it without paying again to reset the story.
I’m pretty easy to please on the exceptional stories, no major criticisms to date, but this one really left a sour taste in my mouth.
Figured I’d say something with everyone else voicing their opinions on the alternate path.
Why do people want a warning for everything in this? I’m kind of disappointed they announced it being a thing, because if you payed attention it’s pretty obvious something would happen if you let it happen. It wasn’t really hidden it just didn’t have anything in-game explicitly saying “something interesting this way.” In a game with limited content, going to the next step and telling me in-game what does what in a metagamey fashion isn’t what I want out of Fallen London because it ruins any capacity for figuring things out on my own.
I understand people wanting to see it, but do you really want to go down the path of bitching at failbetter until they just flat out tell you everything beforehand?
My only complaint on this story was the combination of zailing, investigation, and the reseting of the exploration progress. Zailing I have no problem with, investigation I have no problem with, and I could have lived with the exploration but all three in a row the way they were felt a little like an action sink to me. Otherwise it would be nice if the breakwater house storylet was left at my lodgings instead of being accessible everywhere.
Oh dear, all this talk of the easter egg has made me horribly nervous. Now here I am at that exact stage, having to decide between the obviously right choice and the rather bad idea, and I hate it. Normally I would take the obvious choice without even hesitating, but knowing that I will never ever see the other option in an echo, and it apparently being so deep in FL lore, I find myself leaning to "that other choice". I wonder how long I will be stuck at this stage contemplating …
EDIT, about an hour later: This is so definitely the best Exceptional Story I have ever played so far, well, maybe except from Flint (and I have played them all but one) - I am enjoying every step of it. (Yes, even climbing up the lifeberg for many days.)
As for what I wrote before about the easter egg - I couldn’t do it. I did indeed find some of the unmentionable content echoed, and that was enough for me to decide I simply could not do it. Alas, I am not made of such stern stuff. All the more exciting to find myself soon afterward at a place I have only heard of in echoes and never thought I would see … and here I am once again pondering a weighty decision. I love this story.
edited by Arandia on 8/29/2016
so, I returned the empty casket and told him his son is alive and I appear to have got, uh, nothing. only things that showed up at the results was 10x putting the bluejacket’s affairs on orders (or something like that) and that’s it. I looked at my items and I haven’t got the boots or the contraption either.
Oh wow. I have just finished this and, oh boy! Loved it.
I think most meaty things have been said so I’ll just chime in on the highlights and the most discussed points.
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I didn’t mind the sailing. Yes, it would have been nice if they through an extra Zailing card (a similar criticism has been levelled about their use of Flash Lays in ES). But even so, I understand why they do it. For beginner players to whom being a POSI is something to aspire to and not something achievable very quickly this is a taster of what zailing is like. So for us oldies it’s not very exciting but I can really imagine it being very popular among the newer players.
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I also didn’t mind the re-trecking across the lifeberg. There are 6 different branches you could play. Between successes and failures that’s 12 different results to read. So I enjoyed the opportunity to retrek the ground until I got all 12. Thematically it also makes sense. It’s not like they forget the route. But it’s a living creature and snow winds blow. The crew has to go back to the safety of the ship to spend the night and in the morning they need to gain access to the wreck again. It makes sense to me.
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The “easter egg”. I agree with many others in that “don’t tell us it’s there and don’t let us discuss” is fine, “tell us it’s there and let us discuss it” is much better, but “tell us and don’t let us discuss it” is a bit off. In particular, because I loved this bit. I really really really want to discuss it. Not because I want to boast or taunt or break the vow of secrecy but because it’s a really interesting bit of lore.
Can we not discuss about a mysterious female appearance?
I understand that we should not reveal mechanics, rewards or the plot of Fate/Exceptional content, but what about the characters?
Received a response (thank you!) regarding my confusion about not needing to do a zee voyage during this story. Probably shouldn’t go into details, but I will say the issue’s been fixed and the cause was something of an edge case anyway.
Yeah, I’m not sure why this is off-limits; we’ve been asked not to discuss Fate-locked content before, but this isn’t any more Fate-locked than the rest of the Exceptional Story, so it just feels like secrecy for secrecy’s sake.
Not to distract from the conversation about secrecy, but I’d like to share my thoughts about the ending choice. For anyone else puzzling over the final choice, what helped me decide was a thought experiment:
[spoiler]What if we had the choice to kill both Harris and the Scientist?
Now, hear me out, I try to play as mercifully as possible. I want to save lives, generally speaking. Why would I want to think about an even bloodier option than we were given?
Both Harris and the Scientist are individuals who represent larger groups: the admiralty trying to prevent people from exploring the depths, and the various independent scientists and explorers who pop up now and again and are quashed by the admiralty (or survive, like the player). Killing Harris won’t stop the admiralty from killing explorers in the future, but it will slow them down now. Killing the Scientist won’t stop future explorers from wanting to plumb the depths, but it might reduce the nuclear possibility that this particular scientist will enrage the flukes.
Killing both, were it an option, would result in a stalemate, but one where both a murderer and a potential disaster are stopped. What is analytically useful here is imagining the flipside: killing both characters would fail to stop either of the larger groups (admiralty or the various scientists/explorers) from their respective murders or disasters. It attempts to forestall possible future deaths with immediate murder, but leaves all of the larger problems unaddressed. If killing either one, or even both, won’t make any lasting changes, why have either one die? There will be future murders by admiralty agents, and future explorers who may or may not anger the flukes, but no-one, not even the generally very powerful player, can stop them.
I chose to let both live because of this thought experiment. This is why I don’t see killing either character as the moral choice, though I’m interested to hear others’ thoughts. [/spoiler]
Re: Rook Crofton’s thought experiment:
In real life, I would have chosen to fake the Engineer’s death, which lets them both live, and leaves both to their fate. In the game, my character chose to let Harris proceed with his homicidal mission, because she feels strongly that there are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know. But even so, I think there is a flaw in Rook’s reasoning. One does not usually have the option to choose in such a way as to eliminate all bad choices, present and future, by a larger group; one can only prevent, or not prevent, an immediate harm. By choosing to intervene with the intended course of each major group in this case is to choose to allow both harms. I think it is just as difficult to justify that course as a moral choice as to justify either murder.
I have been sitting with the tab open for several hours, I can’t decide whether to pursue the easter egg or not. I want to see the content, but I don’t know if I’ll miss out on anything else.
I did the easter egg on my alt and I avoided it on my main. I can assure you that they ENTIRELY different stories. Each one has a significant block of content that the other entirely lacks.
On an unrelated note
Who is the Grandmother that the Captain was referring to in his wall painting? I assume Lifeburgs are the spawn of Mount Nomad, and my memory is that Mount Nomad is the child of the Thief of Faces and the Mountain of Light. So would she be the Thief, or the Mountain?
I think it’s the former. Especially, given the choice of the branch icon.
edited by genesis on 8/30/2016
I had no idea there was even an Easter egg! I feel glad for reading the forums so I know there was a thing to do that I didn’t do, but I liked this story so well that I was actually coming here to post how enjoyable it was - oblivious! Zailing and all, yes indeed.
I’m not even done with it yet - but that’s how well I liked it. It allows me to enjoy the mythos, the gleeful story just under the surface, a bit more. So lovely to read and think about the depths of it all. The twisted minds who make this stuff tick - thank you!
Yrs,
-b
Well that doesn’t make my choice any easier. I’ve been searching for echoes of the secret content for a while, but it seems everyone is keeping the secret. It’s not too often that I spend this much time making a choice, so well done on that I suppose.
I seem to recall someone in this thread saying that the easter egg content only makes sense if you have played one of the previous Exceptional Stories. If my memory doesn’t betray me, could someone tell me exactly which story is that? I’m curious whether I’m utterly dumb and incapable of connecting dots, or if it’s simply one of the stories I haven’t played.