I have been stumbling through the streets of Fallen London for a few days now and with all the options and possibilities the city offers me, I have a hard time choosing them.
-Slowly I have been amassing a lot of usable items in my inventory, are they important to use or can they hurt me ? Should I do them as soon as one is available or not?
-Basically the same question about Opportunity cards, should I do those before doing anything else, or keep them for something special?
-Or do I just ignore all of them and do storylets ?
-And what about menaces, should I focus on getting rid of them asap ? Nightmares are getting out of hand with all the watchful fails.
My highest skill(watchful) is only 25 now with persuasive being the runner up at 21+2.
Welcome :-). Cards will regenerate once used, so use them first if they’re of interest, otherwise discard. Menaces will self-resolve once they hit 8, in a non-optional manner that’s not too painful :).
There’s no right answer otherwise - EVENTUALLY you’ll run out of content but that’s a long, long way away and most of it can be one in any order. Explore and enjoy!
I’d recommend following Echo Bazaar on Facebook or Twitter and availing of the daily advent calendar codes that are being given out there.
As for everything else, just fiddle around and have fun! The usable items in your inventory can’t hurt you too much, so you might as well have a look at them. Gold and bronze-bordered cards are usually something more special than the standard white-bordered ones, so be sure to check those out.
Hey, it doesn’t matter. Just pick what you think sounds most interesting at any given time. You’ll get a chance to do everything soon enough!
…more specifically, Fallen London is a forgiving game. It’s very rare that playing one thing (card, item, whatever) permanently blocks you from playing another, and on the few occasions when it does, there’s a pretty clear warning. You can’t "die" - at least not in the sense of ending the game and having to start again - and even if you end up being knocked back by a bad choice, there’s invariably an interesting bit of storyline to compensate you. So just have fun.
Although it should be noted that there are going to be a few one-time only cards. They have golden borders (even if "help" tab insists on calling them bronze) and are generally part of some story. If you play them, they will advance this story and won’t come back, but if you just discard them (or fail stat challenge) they’ll be back eventually.
As to items - it’s generally a good idea to keep a hefty stack of everything, there are certain storylets that require you to have a particular item. However, if you are low on money and just feel like selling things, don’t hesitate. Items from "goods" category (particularly moon-pearls, nevercold brass slivers and rostygold) are (in my opinion, none of this official in any way) really good for selling purposes, as they can’t be converted into other things. I’d say that you shouldn’t bother much with item conversions right now, wait untill you need higher-tier items for a storylet or something.
As Ewan C. said - when you hit 8 on any menace they self-resolve. What happens is you go to the menace area, and once you are there you can reduce your menace. Once it’s at 0 you can go back to London.
First I would like to say an extra thanks to Cocytus for pointing out the advent bonuses, I had already liked the facebook page, but it wasn’t quite clear what those special links were for, with the weird text accompanying them.
Not that I exactly know what the things are that I got.
This new information about menaces is great news actually, I spent over 10 actions trying to lower my nightmares with fiends.
As for the items, I wasn’t talking about things we can convert to something better, but special items like:
Surprise package, Implacable Detectives business card, Nephrite Lens, Page from the Liber Visionis, the ones in ‘Curiosity’.
Gold/bronze storylets won’t disappear on me, will they ? edited by BobMaster on 12/10/2013
[quote]As for the items, I wasn’t talking about things we can convert to something better, but special items like:
Surprise package, Implacable Detectives business card, Nephrite Lens, Page from the Liber Visionis, the ones in ‘Curiosity’.[/quote]
Surprise package you click on in your inventory to open and obtain free stuff.[li]
nephrite lens can do stuff to hurt you ONLY if you play the actions (just letting it sit in your inventory does nothing), and you can use it in the multiplayer knife and candle; i’d just hold on to them for now.
page from liber visionis is used to change your avatar as seen on the profile page ("myself"). you can save it or use it, but since you just started playing you probably want to hold on to it for a bit.
some of the curiosity items will be useable, some won’t. if they have a green border around them they can be used by clicking on them and playing the storylet that follows. no need to use them right away if you don’t want to.
feel free to send me menace reduction social actions if you need. access them from storylets in your lodgings.
As to items - that depends. If you click on them it’s usually explained what exactly they do, and you can decide if it’s something you want done now or later. For example, Page from Liber Visionis allows you to change your cameo, if you feel like changing. And as far as I’m aware it’s not useful for anything else.
The Liber Visionis page lets you change your portrait thing in game. Beyond that, most items will warn you if the option is particularly risky (though avoid Ridiculous Hats and Bottled Oblivion). Other than that, if you’re worried about what a particular option does, you can Google “Echo Bazaar wiki” for some UNofficial wikis, or just try an item and see what happens!
Surprise package - open it. You never know what you might get.
Implacable Detectives card - apparently can start a potentially profitable short story. Not something I’ve done myself as I only recently discovered how to get more (after over a year playing!)
Nephrite Lens - more for Knife and Candle but does have other uses and if you lose it you can get another one of the Exotica items.
Page from the Liber Visonis - only if you want to change your in game cameo.
Curiosity items difficult to advise as some can be sold others will be useful. Some of them just measure your progress in stories.
Thank you M’Lady ciel, that was exactly the explanation I was hoping for.
I have opened the packet, the others are all still locked anyway.
I better burn that page before it tempts me…
Currently I always start with the opportunity cards, then travel around and find new colored storylets or finish the ones I am working on, I suppose that is a good way to search for more excitement in Fallen London.
Thanks again to everyone. edited by BobMaster on 12/10/2013
[quote=Karaeir]Although it should be noted that there are going to be a few one-time only cards. […] If you play them, they will advance this story and won’t come back, but if you just discard them (or fail stat challenge) they’ll be back eventually.[/quote]Thanks! I hadn’t said quite what I meant there, I appreciate you stepping in to clear it up.
[quote=BobMaster]Gold/bronze storylets won’t disappear on me, will they ?[/quote]To my knowledge the ‘pinned’ yellow storylets will wait for you forever, so it might be a good idea to keep them waiting until you can easily pass all their challenges. If you’d be interested in getting either of the two Devils in the Church-related storyline in Ladybones as your companion, then you’d definitely want to wait with that one until you can pay for the Devil you want. Because apparently that’s your one and only chance.
The regular ‘pinned’ storylets will remain as long as the relevant main quality (Watchful, Shadowy, Dangerous, Persuasive) is within that storylets ‘unlock-window’. If you let your main qualities get too high, these storylets will just silently vanish from the list and you’d have to find a way to lower your qualities if you want to play one that you missed. The Talkative Ratus Faber is the best way to do this, and it is effective enough that you shouldn’t need anything else if you put your mind to try every storylet once. It is a bit annoying though, because unless you have enough items to give you +25 or so, you can end up with a ‘blind spot’ where the storylets are locked because your unmodified Watchful is too high, and your Watchful -25 (from the rat) is too low. So, watch out for that I guess? Easiest way to avoid progressing your qualities too fast for the 10-30 range storylets is probably to switch areas often. (I’ve considered writing a long rant about how annoying all this was when I did it.)
Some of the gold/bronze opportunity cards will also stop appearing if the relevant quality gets too high (75+ maybe?). One way to see the upper locks for any card is to lower the relevant quality with the Talkative Rattus Faber so that your quality is too low. If the card can’t be discarded it’ll be automatically removed from your hand, but if it’s a regular card it’ll instead show you both the lower limit and the upper limit for the required quality. Also, some gold/bronze cards (and maybe stories?) will actually let the story progress even if you fail a challenge, thereby making your failure a part of the story. That may be a good or bad thing, depending on if you’re more interested in succeeding or in progressing the story.
There are a few easy storylets in each main area that activates ‘living stories’ that boost your main qualities every week. The Dangerous ones in Watchmaker’s Hill are locked with too high/low Dangerous, but the other three in their respective areas have the easiest ones open even to maxed qualities. Repeat them every week for weekly boosts.
Menaces can be handled before they reach 8 by various means. I simply stopped clicking on dream cards when the merry gentleman started showing up. Then I waited for opportunity cards to bring Nightmares down, and if need be I moved to a different area of London to do other than Watchful-challenges. And you might want to look into the Carnival and get connected to the various factions there so you can start playing the faction conflict cards that show up with 5+ in various faction connections. Siding with Urchins vs The Widow reduces Nightmares, as does attending a Church fête. Buying laudanum is also an option, especially if you have enough Shadowy to rob the drunk, anonymous wretch in Spite. That’s where the easy low-level money is. Form a line, everyone. Pitch a tent. And remember to open your bundle before getting a new one.