Starting again

It’s been years since I played in Fallen London - a mobile app as getting ready to launch, many players still called it Echo Bazaar - and at the time I had exhausted the content available, while still feeling like I understood less of the setting than the average player (probably because I didn’t frequent the forums as much).

I allowed Exceptional Friendship to pass, and eventually stopped playing, but have long wanted to return. However, I don’t remember enough of the game - both story and mechanically - to step into my old character. He’s in the middle of a number of stories I don’t recall, and, lots of opportunity cards advancing Qualities I don’t remember their use.

Two questions.

Considering the rejiggering of the early game that was going on when I left, and playing say 40 actions a day, how long before a new character might get back up to 150 in the 4 major Qualities? I’m wondering how much slog to get back to where I started, roughly.

I’m a little forlorn at losing my old character, especially with him having passed through a few events that I imagine have been pruned from the game proper - not to mention my friend the Rubbery Conspirator, a gift for bug reporting in the early StoryNexus days. But accounts are attached to my social media login - I can’t figure out how to reset the FL character attached to my Facebook account. I suppose I could create a new account via email…

An in general: any thoughts for a New-Old player?

Just an idea: leave your old character where he currently is. Start a new one and re-learn the game by playing that one. Once you remember enough you’ll be able to continue playing the old character, too. :)

I think Phryne has the right idea. Don’t get rid of your old character (and perhaps, if you’ve got the time, spend the old character’s actions once or twice a day on something profitable and innocuous). As you relearn those ropes, you can transfer back to your original, or keep both of them. Lots of people have secondary characters for doing things (such as seeking Mr. Eaten’s name) that they don’t want to do with their main character.

The question of timing remains. It took me several years to get to 150 in those stats. If that’s how long it would take now, I’m disinclined to pick it back up again in any capacity.

I consider myself a rather casual player who only logs in once or twice a day and I think I got to around 150 within a year easily. Maybe things were slower in the very early days, I don’t know. It seems I started playing around the time you stopped.

Generally, I don’t think Fallen London is a game that should be rushed, ever, in any way. Take your time. But if that’s not your style, maybe it’s not for you after all. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

It depends on how often you play, of course, but it certainly shouldn’t take years to get up to 150 unless you’re playing very, very little. I’ve been playing for just over two years, and the only reason my Shadowy’s at 134 (instead of the 200 of all my other stats) is that I’ve neglected it unconscionably. That said, without paying much attention to it I’ve gotten it up about 6 points this week.

So, I don’t think time should worry you. That said, I agree with Phryne that Fallen London is in any case best sipped, not guzzled. It will take you months to run out of content, and by that point all of your stats are probably going to be getting up past 150 already. If you feel some stat is lagging, social actions are your best way to improve them quickly. (You’re welcome to shoot them at me.)

Getting most stats to 100 shouldn’t take too long with training professions (which payment gives stat boost up until lv.70) and Making Your Name quest lines. The one exception to this is Shadowy as its MYN progression is kind of a mess, but you can boost it pretty quick using loitering. You can spend favours on faction cards to get some quick stat boosts as well.

That said, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I don’t know how bad progression was in the old days, but nowadays the progress from 0 to 100 is smooth (again, Shadowy is the exception), I usually get to PoSI level within two or three months from regularly playing. Difficulty of getting from 100 to 200 varies between stats, but again, favours and social actions help if you want to get there fast. Personally, I never feel the need to rush it.

I started in March 2018 and I’m 150+ in all stats. If you’re f2p it might take longer.

A Light Fingers alt I started 7 weeks ago is now PoSI with 110 in all stats. Considering the large amount of boosts you get in the early game, getting to 150 will probably take as least as long again. If you use social actions a lot, 4 months total seems like a reasonable estimate. If you are an Exceptional Friend it will go even faster. If raising stats is your main focus you might consider equipping a certain stat reducing rat at some point, because playing only 100% successes will slow you down considerably.
edited by Monara on 12/21/2018

Compared to years previous, there are two major sources of stat gain that will accelerate your gain. First, the re-organization of early-game content (Making Your Name) gives major boosts to your main stats every time you complete a ‘chapter.’ Five levels, easily. Second, as part of the Connection->Favors/Renown conversion, you can now trade Favors on most Faction cards for stat gain. This is also substantial, maxing out at 1.5 levels for 5 favors if your stats are above 70. Both of these are fairly ‘organic’ and won’t be an additional action sink beyond your normal playing.

There are other opportunities for grindings stats, like the updated social actions, but those require more dedication. If you’re interested in playing the game in a non-grindy fashion, your stat gain will be appreciable faster than it was before.

Also if it took you several years to reach 150, is it possible that you played for some time when the stat cap was lower?

Thank you for the information! I was really using the stat levels as a proxy for “amount of content consumed” - I had, when I stopped, consumed every piece of content available in the game, and while I’m happy to “sip” I didn’t want to wait a year before getting to a point where I was seeing new storylets.

I’ve signed up for a new account - tricky because I had accounts under all my social media already - and am working through now. Thank you for the heads up!

Is there anything you’d direct a new player to I should know about, as long as I’m here?

One thing I can think of, is that the old Connections system has been rebooted. With most factions you gather Renown, by spending favors.
There are a lot of guides in the forums. Check the Favors/Renown ones to begin with. Check what you can get from the Christmass event currently underway. Lots of events coming too and they are usually profitable. The Weekly questions threads are also useful.
Use social actions - there are threads were players ask for chess opponents and people to loiter with.
My character (profile in signature) is available for most of them.

There’s been a lot of new content introduced, and some older content reworked, so you’ll probably start seeing new stuff quite soon. This is not even counting festival content, which generally brings something new every year. You sound like you’ve never even seen the Election or the Fruits of the Zee festival, so this summer will bring a hefty amount of new material.

Advice for a ‘new’ player? Utilize the forums. Whether you need questions answered or tea shared, you’ll usually find many here willing to help. Also, to echo the inimitable Jolanda Swan, social actions are your friend (pun not intended–but not avoided, either). Don’t do the (fairly rare) harmful social actions without clearing it with your partner first, but other than that, most of us are up for about anything.

Someone has sent me a social action of some kind (what are those? New things already!) but I can’t seem to access it, presumably because I logged into the wrong account with it (I had a number of alts back in the day,and can’t keep them straight!)

Regardless, thank you for the welcome back everyone

That social action in question is probably mine… Most social actions can only be given or received when one is present in London, and my character has currently gone to Zee. My apologies, I shall return to London shortly so you can respond to my invite!
edited by Vega on 12/27/2018

I also started in that month, and my stats are at an average of ~140.