People were still accepting gifts of mine yesterday after the Celebrate storylet vanished, so it might not be too late yet for your outstanding gifts. But yes, I tested it at the start of the Feast and declining non-Fate gifts just vanishes the gift and the cost with it.
I started the conversation with The Lady in Lilac, but decided to see if I can go back so I clicked “perhaps not” but that just kicked me back to veilgarden with my Entwined in the Intrigues of the Clathermont Family quality stuck at 20. Am I locked out of completing the story?
Oh wait, never mind, the option to answer her was further down in Veilgarden.
edited by swaggery on 2/23/2016
I’ve just realised that getting a tattoo also has this quality change which I’ve never heard of before: “Your ‘Empty Skin’ Quality has gone!”
Quick question I know today’s the last day of the feast, but will Milicent’s parlour go away after the 26th?
Millicent’s Parlour will disappear around noon GMT today according to information I have seen elsewhere.
Edit - so you have around an hour and a half.
edited by reveurciel on 2/26/2016
Well, I have to say these last few days have been pretty amazing for my Watchful score - 5CP, plus 50p worth of Inklings, per action from talking to The Lady in Lilac gets some fast levels!
I think this is my fourth year in a row of ducking out of Fallen London during the Feast of the Rose; I’ll basically never meet the Captivating Princess but at this point it’s almost a role-playing choice. I find the mechanics of the Feast (mandatory social actions and card drawing) so repellent that it sucks the fun out of the rest of the game, which I fully recognise is irrational. And I have no excuse for why I keep ducking Fruits of the Zee, which has much more of the kind of content I’m interested in.
Indeed there are cards, but I wouldn’t say there are "mandatory" social actions. You can participate in Feast activities playing solo. At a minimum, you can see this as two weeks in which you get a new Ubiquitous Frequency card which usually pays out 2.5 - 5 echoes (and some masquing, which you can trade for unique companions or for Stolen Kisses).
Even without social actions, the Feast is a very profitable holiday.
This was my first Feast and I’d just like to say that I absolutely loved it. I had a simply wonderful time.
Companion wise I did alright, but not as well as I could have. I just found my Explosion of Neath-Colours on the Stroke of Midnight way too cool to trade in, even if it doesn’t actually do anything useful.
I think the writers are selling themselves short with the Lady in Lilac conversation, I think it worked very well.
Let me tell you, that card might say it’s Ubiquitous but I saw it once this year and got nothing from it. I drew about 50 cards before I once again got the sense that Fallen London was having a party and no-one invited my character, and wandered off.
One possible, albeit somewhat overwrought, options for future incarnations of the festival is to have a recurring living story (say, once a day) that gives you one “free” redirect to each of the three feast cards. You can still get the card in the deck the usual way (possibly at a slightly lower rarity) but you are guaranteed to get them once a day or two.
This was my first Feast of the Exceptional Rose, and it was certainly an interesting experience, but I really wanted to enjoy it more. Unfortunately, the timing was very inconvenient for me: I’ve been busy lately, and I’ve also finally shown signs of fatigue after seven months of close involvement with the game (and a couple of negative experiences with certain stories), so I wasn’t in much of a mood to play.
And it all seems to have ended so fast, which is a pity. When one logs in often and has the game in one’s mind a lot, time seems to dilate and everything appears to last longer. (Upon looking at the earliest entries of my journal for the first time, I marvelled at how closely together all those milestones and new stories were packed, which until then I had thought occupied ten or fifteen days rather than three.) When one has other things to worry about, however, one barely logs in often enough not to lose the weekly payment, and just a couple of times of thinking "not now, I’ll find a better time to properly read up about the Feast (and its deadlines)" are enough to push one beyond those unknown deadlines.
In the end I saw about half of the feast, though I only got to play through a small portion of the available branches. I did exchange some gifts at one point, and I converted them to masquing (all of 21 points), but I never got to trade them for a companion so I have no idea what that’s like. This doesn’t bother me much (perhaps because I don’t know what I’m missing), and I enjoyed certain other seasonal experiences, but there is something that really stings: I’ve missed the opportunity to visit Clathermont’s. I meant to advance Millicent’s story there and, although I think I can still do so anyway, that way I’ll miss the intermediate step that I could find during the festival. Actually, I can’t remember: how big is the damage? Can someone inform me about my options? Do I have to wait another year to see what happens with that story?
I can’t answer the question about Millicent as I’m shakier on her mechanics, but in short, that opportunity only comes once a year. That said, here’s a bit on the companions:
All companions were obtainable on the An Encounter at the Feast card. This, along with the Lady in Lilac was pinned in all London locations from last Monday until Friday. Your masquing could have been spent to get almost all the free companions as they cost between 3-7 (or 10, I don’t remember) a piece. Your earned masquing should have been converted to Making Waves now but if you had any gifts you did not use this year they will remain in your inventory.
Eh, don’t mock - my quality didn’t reset last year so I had to contact support this year to gain my second tattoo. Consider how tedious it would be if that had to happen manually for every one.
It’s not just mocking- it’s also saying it for the record, so people don’t go crazy over the possibility of some hidden storyline.
I mean, it is easy to mistake this for being an actual story-starter, even if most living stories are really, really old.