Is it worth the investment, or a waste of resources? Do you make a lot of money from it?
Alas, you don’t make a lot of money from it. It is, however, an interesting thing to play with, provides accomplishments for printing different flavours of newspaper and also allows you to equip your newspaper as an Affiliation giving +1 Watchful and Persuasive.
If you’re in it for the money, sorry - there are far better alternatives out there - but it’s a good way to pass the time and you do get a useful piece of equipment from it.
You are asking two very different questions here.
First and foremost, make sure you have quick, ready and straightforward access to the Missing Woman storylet in Wilmot’s End. You will need this in order to easily obtain the Whirling Contraptions needed for your paper. If your stats are too low for this, then you should probably move on for now and enjoy the lower level content while it lasts.
Secondly, if what you want is money, just pure accruement of Echoes, then this storylet is not the most profitable. I recommend going to Hunter’s Keep and camping out there. Other folks swear by the University/Flit exploit. The best Echo grinding options will gain you in the neighborhood of 1.5 Echoes per action.
Thirdly, aquiring a newspaper gets you all sorts of cool things that Echoes just can’t buy, namely a +1 Watchful/Persuasive Affiliation you get to name yourself, one of four singular Accomplishments and access to 3 other Accomplishments, all of which are increasable and give you new descriptions as they are raised.
Lastly, the rewards are somewhere in between 1.14 and 1.25 Echoes per actions if you are willing to do some card grinding and have willing friends who you can interview about their Ambitions. It’s 1.06 if you aren’t.
EDIT: I would also like to point out that this storylet has some of the best writing in the game and is one of my favorites, having worked in newspapers for years.
edited by Nigel Overstreet on 4/2/2012
Chiming in to agree with other responses: I think it’s worth it because it’s a great story and because of the variation of steps you can have a lot of repeat plays without it seeming like grinding, even when you’re trying to get specific results. It’s got a great humour to it too. But it’s much easier when you have Wilmot’s End’s source of Contraptions, and some of the connections/animals it required so there isn’t actually a grind to set it up initially.
Not particularly “profitable”, in tangible objects, but worth it in content.
Even if you aren’t aiming for profit, it’s probably for the best to get a Newspaper, as it’s the only affiliation that grants watchful if I am not mistaken.
The Doubt Street storyline is the mainline Shadowy 120-130 storyline. You can no more skip it than you can skip being exiled from court, if you want to continue following the main story. You will almost certainly be required to have published a paper at some point for the 130-140 content, assuming it ever gets released.
edited by Patrick Reding on 4/2/2012
The stories don’t interest me at all, so I skipped the exiled from court routine and the newspaper grind. Looking at the wikis, it doesn’t look like I’ve missed anything important or left any prerequisites unlocked for the future.
The beauty of Fallen London is that it seems versatile enough not to require everyone to take the same linear, dungeon-crawling path through its underbelly to have a good time.
Sorry, but you need to be exiled from court to play the Foreign Office content. I learned that the hard way.
Again, I decided to skip it. To me, the Wilmot’s End content is the only really poorly written part of Fallen London. While some of the rewards are good, the Foreign Office story doesn’t offer anything special that can’t be easily had elsewhere. Storywise, there’s no incentive for me to go through the trouble of another dull grind to get them here, and sidestepping this content makes no difference to the overall game.
Just like the newspaper, the game lets me avoid the content that doesn’t interest me with no negative consequences.
edited by Blast_Fantastic on 4/3/2012
In order to reach the Carnelian Coast, which was the point of being exiled from Court in the first place, it’s necessary to get a passport of some kind from the Foreign Office. As such, it will eventually be necessary to complete the Foreign Office.
Of course you should! Its good to support local business, and the internet won’t be invented in Fallen London for about 60-70 years. I imagine the Masters will have a field day with Ebay.
I personally enjoyed the Foreign Office, but spywork is and has been a major part of my character since my earliest Veilgarden days. The early grind of the Newspaper made the story feel more important, but the actual news cycle doesn’t feel worth reporting more than a few times.
Before I could steal journals of infamy in the Flit it was my best source, but now having to get the component every time and then bother my friends for copy just isn’t very fun.
I look forward to it being continued however.
Although somehow they still have Twitter accounts. We don’t ask how that works.
Messenger bats. Thought everyone knew that. How else would they instantly know if you mentioned their names?
No, obviously they do it via the Correspondence. :)