I don’t get this place. (I don’t particularly like it either.)
It has so many qualities and I can’t seem to wrap my head around how they interlink.
Is it even important to figure it out? Is it advisable? Or is staying away the best idea?
Is there a Guide to the Hurlers somewhere?
[quote=phryne]I don’t get this place. (I don’t particularly like it either.)
It has so many qualities and I can’t seem to wrap my head around how they interlink.
Is it even important to figure it out? Is it advisable? Or is staying away the best idea?
Is there a Guide to the Hurlers somewhere?[/quote]
The Wiki has one. https://fallenlondon.wiki/wiki/The_Hurlers
I feel a bit like that about the church in the wild (the staying away bit).
Oops – just checked, there doesn’t actually seem to be any "guidance" to the guide. Sorry!
edited by Jermaine Vendredi on 1/7/2022
You’re right, the wiki doesn’t have the best coverage of the Hurlers content that isn’t covered by the ban on the Scholar of Discordance storyline. (A ban I strongly disagree with, by the way; people should be able to spoil themselves if they want to, whether on this, Enigma, or the SMENdings, without jumping through gratuitous hoops).
Anyway, all the content up to "Unlocking Deeper Discordant Studies" is not covered by the ban and is adequately recorded on the wiki storylet-by-storylet, but you’re right, there’s not yet a great overview of the structure of the storyline and what you’re supposed to do.
Here’s the gist:
[spoiler]Start by talking to the Disembarked Deviless in the station. Move to the encampment and talk to the Goat there to get the first level of Crystalline Knowledge. Buy Frigid Intuitions at the camp and use them at various spots in the wastes (the hill, the lake, the ruins) to dig for Curios. You want to FAIL the check on the dig to get Curios. The Deviless will need a few batches of Curios to progress the storyline. She moves between the camp, the station, and the lake, I think, over this part of the story. (Pay attention to the story text; it often contains strong indications of what you’re supposed to do next, where the Deviless is moving to, etc., and it’s not marked in bold as game instructions. This applies even moreso to the "secret" content!)
You should also visit the ruins and talk to the Steward. Playing cards with her will get her to talk about more topics and will let you swear the Steward’s Oath. Eventually, you come back to her to unlock the Discordance Studies storyline.
On the lake, you can "Open your eyes" to get access to the Adulterine Castle. Be SURE to bring at least 3010 Honey and Crystallized Euphoria with you the first time you unlock the location, as you’ll need it to build a route to your Parabolan Base-Camp, and the only other way to exit the Castle is through the Mirror-Marches, which is a pain.
The most notable thing you can do in the Adulterine Castle prior to starting the "secret" content is bet on Hurling matches, which lets you unlock a Discordant Law at the standing stones. These get you highly-profitable red-bordered (i.e. zero-action if you’re already out of actions) cards that appear in London, as well as having special uses in certain other storylines such as planning the Tracklayer’s City.
Once you have a Discordant Law, go to the Nadir and play an option on the new card there. This removes your Discordant Law (you can always get it back again), but more importantly, it gives you the Discordant Studies ("Featherlight") quality. With this in hand you can finally return to the Steward and begin the "secret" content with "Unlock deeper Discordant Studies".[/spoiler]
Past this point, there is in fact a player-created Google doc guide (not made by me) that matter-of-factly covers the "secret" content as well as the above writeup (which is in effect a paraphrase from it). I can’t share the URL publicly, obviously, but anyone who’s interested in the link can PM me.
edited by hwoosh on 1/7/2022
Thanks a ton, hwoosh! I confess reading through the part behind the spoiler tag just increased my desire to postpone this content until a point in time when I’ll have nothing else left to do. It seems… complicated and both time- and resource-consuming.
[quote=Jermaine Vendredi]I feel a bit like that about the church in the wild (the staying away bit).[/quote]I feel you. I played through the whole content with the first account who got that far with their Railway, and have left it untouched with the others. The difference of course is that Church in the Wild is fairly straightforward and you more or less know what you’re doing.
edited by phryne on 1/7/2022
If I recall correctly, I got through it all in two or three weeks–and that was in my spare actions, with a big chunk of each day’s actions being reserved for card-flipping and weekly cash-ins.
Honestly, I found it very enjoyable. I like the crunchy game mechanics, and both on that front and in the quality of the writing it is a tour de force comparable to or better than anything else Chandler Groover has written for FL.
[quote=hwoosh]You’re right, the wiki doesn’t have the best coverage of the Hurlers content that isn’t covered by the ban on the Scholar of Discordance storyline. (A ban I strongly disagree with, by the way; people should be able to spoil themselves if they want to, whether on this, Enigma, or the SMENdings, without jumping through gratuitous hoops)[/quote] I think (used in moderation for puzzly, optional content) it’s a fair expectation to hold back spoilers and guides for a certain amount of time. The mystique and exclusivity are fun for a while, until at some point either the content is worth playing regardless of whether one knows the broad outline, or it wasn’t very good content to begin with. To slightly misquote a favourite critic, "It’s not what happens but how it happens that makes a story worth playing."
I think Discordance is entitled to a bit more mystery at ~9 months old, but I definitely agree about late SMEN and Enigma: we’re talking about a dozen storylets of 5+ year old content. Any hypothetical wiki "spoilers" would be under the wiki limit of 250 characters anyways, so nothing changes if somebody wants the full well-ordered text (asking politely for a private message, doing a bit of internet sleuthing, or just playing it oneself). And any "Mysterious Content" on the wiki can include a distinctive header like the current SMEN Content one to ward off spoiling oneself if desired or even come pre-collapsed (like the current Discordance summary) to be extra careful.
Lucky you, I’m still struggling to build my first railway station.
I enjoyed the Hurlers, but I am glad the story is sort of set aside from the content otherwise. It was something I came back to with Caroline and was glad there was not a pressure regarding continuing it. Also, probably as proud of finishing it as anything else except maybe the Cider.
I will point out in clearer terms that while the Hurlers storyline is quite a resource and time sink, the discordant ripple cards, available anywhere in London, are hugely valuable.
Their payouts range from commonly around 5 to the occasional 12.5, and again, like any autofire as long as you clear your actions first you can play the card with no action, which adds hugely to the profitability, since you can basically add whatever the value of one action is for you on top of the card reward.
Since you can usually draw several of these cards a day, this all comes to the Hurlers content actually being enormously rewarding in the long run. I’d say you can easily recoup spent materials and actions in a year or so and the rest is gravy.
On top of all that I also agree with hwoosh that it was all very fun and interesting so I’d certainly recommend it for that alone. But the cards are a strong added incentive.
There’s currently only guides to the discordant section and the hurling mechanic on the wiki. Planning to make a more generic guide to the Hurler’s at some point - e.g. Cold Comfort, etc.
As a character with maxed out stats (now slightly reduced after a virgin expedition to the Cave of the Nadir, Irrigo 10 attained), it is a pain to dig for those Curios the Deviless wants. Even after equipping stat-reducing items, my success rate is about 82%. I need failures to get the Curios.
Perhaps I might need to go to the Cave of the Nadir a few more times, stay there a long time, get my stats further reduced. Sounds masochistic, but that’s the only realistic way I can think of to proceed with the digging at the Hurlers.
By the way, you can get quite a number of Correspondence Plaques by using up actions at Waswood. They are needed for preparing for excavations in the Hurlers.
Or you could equip a talkative rattus faber for -25 on each stat.
Iirc, the digging challenges are Darkness dependent. Mess with the Stove in your Station and you can get your odds below 40%
Stove decreases darkness, I think. I never built it. You want to hold your breath at the spa to increase darkness. I think. Holding your breath is definitely the thing you want to do to make the difficulty higher.
If you’re clueless at the Hurlers, you should be all set.