The Fruits of the Zee Festival 2025!

False-Summer bathes London in a syrupy heat, and Londoners, tired of the inclement good weather, set zail to melancholy Mutton Island to take the air. But the zees are quiescent, and the King-in-Coral holds court…

The Fruits of the Zee Festival

Fruits of the Zee is our free, annual festival of the bounty of the zee. The festival begins today, the 4th of September, and ends on September the 18th.

Supplicate the zee with sacrifices to turn Mutton Island’s fortunes around. Dive beneath the waters of Shepherd’s Wash and explore the wrecks that linger beneath that forlorn isle. Descend as deep as you dare, and unearth what treasures courage allows. Bargain with the King-in-Coral for ownership of the bounties you wrest from the zee.

Encounter the island’s visitors, trade your winnings, restore the festival to its former glory, and perhaps even meet the Green-Gilled Shipwright and see the works of his craft.

You don’t need to own a ship to participate: anyone can catch a ferry from Wolfstack Docks to Mutton Island to join the festivities. When you arrive at Mutton Island, playing the storylet ‘Mutton Island, Unadorned’ will unlock the festival’s activities.

Wreck-Diving

In the first week of the Festival, you’ll be able to dive the wrecks off Mutton Island for treasures. To begin, you’ll need to raise your Five-Fold Devotion by Supplicating the Shore-line.

Once you begin diving, you’ll be able to push your luck as far as you dare, before emerging with a treasure. These treasures can be traded in the second week of the Festival. You can check the value of your treasures by reading ‘A Fruits of the Zee Primer’, available throughout the Festival.

The first week will conclude with, as is becoming tradition, a ceremonial drowning.

Trading

In the second week of the festival, you’ll be able to trade your treasures for Thalassic Favour at the Fruits Market. You can then exchange Thalassic Favour for new items, items from previous Fruits of the Zee festivals, and economy items.

Items from previous years, as well as this year, are also available for Fate from the Fruits Market. You may also trade several of the new items with visiting characters in exchange for cosmetic variants with identical statistics.

Finally, if you own a ship, you can also trade high amounts of Thalassic Favour for new ships from the Green-Gilled Shipwright. These ships are also available at sporadic times during the year, but are cheapest during the Fruits of the Zee. Your ship’s value will be factored into the purchase – you may only have one ship at a time.

As always, those who have the Cladery Heart will need to stash it in London, but may trade in their other ship.

What’s Different in 2025?

We’ve added a couple of new things to the festival this year!

The Pale Tabernacle

Encounter the Pale Tabernacle at zee – a mythical idyll and zailor’s tall tale.

The Pale Tabernacle is a vignette that adds three cards to your zailing deck, which can be drawn in every zee locale. It also adds a rarer, fourth card, which permits your Nautical Agents to engage in a unique plot to track the Tabernacle down so that you might step upon its shores. These cards and encounters progress a small, repeatable side-story alongside your normal zailing progress, in which you learn the truth behind a thousand drunken zailors’ boasts.

The Pale Tabernacle costs 10 Fate, and requires that you own your own ship and have access to the Agents feature.

New Coral Beneath the Waves!

Uncover a new type of coral while Wreck-Diving – Gorgonian Reef-Rock! These can later be traded for one of three brand new items of Clothing.

Lastly, Destinies

Those without a Destiny, or wishing to change their Destiny, may travel to Irem during the Fruits of the Zee Festival and do so via ‘The Riddlefishers: Matters of Destiny’.

Those without a Destiny may also acquire one from the Drowning Feast, once the Fruits of the Zee Festival is back in full swing during the second week.

5 Likes

This right here is what I’ve been hoping Agents start doing: integrating Plots with regular gameplay. I was already leaning towards picking this one up based on the premise, definitely getting it now.

2 Likes

Hmm, so for old players all you have to do is to get one coral, trade it week later, and that’s it?

Get three of it to get all three variants. But effectively yes.

1 Like

Three Gorgonian Reef-Rock corals, if you want all three cosmetic variations of the new item. The two extras might be useful for equipping Agents anyway.

It’s also worth meeting the Pentamerous Bride again, since you get a Fecund Amber from the Fathomking if you already have the Litter-Cryst.

Edit: actually, it seems that you don’t need to visit the Pentamerous Bride again to get a Fecund Amber, since the “Discovered: the Pentamerous Bride” quality isn’t reset before the festival.

1 Like

I wonder if item copies for Agents worth the effort. Cosmetic copies are definitely not, last thing I need is more icons in my inventory.

My Mild-Mannered Mondaine is already using the Shadowy Gloves and Adornment from past FotZ. This year’s Shadowy Clothing might turn out useful too.

If I did my math correctly, you should be able to fish a Gorgonian coral in 18 actions on average:

4 actions to raise Devotion to 5
1 action to dive
33% chance to get the correct card in your hand at depth 1 (3 draws out of a 9-card deck)
1 action to claim the coral if you’re lucky, otherwise take anything else and resurface.

Except it appears to be “barren”?

I’m surprised there’s only one new item, didn’t there used to be more? I guess maybe they’re doing fewer, higher quality items this year?

I am a sucker for stained glass artwork, and also for esoteric uses of obscure game qualities, so my one encounter with a Tabernacle card so far is pretty exciting.


5 Likes

.. for me the option to start the Festival appeared after doing the other two already existing options.

Seems there are a bunch of tie ins. I’ve seen options for having “A Ragtag Gang of Outlaws”, “An Initiate into the Perfumer’s Arts”, and “Sampling His Lordship’s Private Cellar”.

The first card I got unlocked a 300 action nautical plot where you need Watchful and Exploration.

Edit: Theres also an option with a zailing speed challenge. Presumably you’ll need one of the fast ships to 100%

Is there a way to embark on The Pale Tabernacle if you skipped this in the initial storyline?

Ah, nevermind. It seems like I already did this last night in the short moment where the body was still functioning on mechanical level, but the memorize-stuff-unit in the brains was already hibernating.

(quality: Paying Too Much Heed to Zailors’ Tales 2 - Looking for the Pale Tabernacle)

Another tie-in with Aria of Tranquility as well, and one option with Zubmersibility.

1 Like

Got three of the new coral, said hi to the bride, got some favours to exchange when it rolls out. Back to the Stacks with me.

And what I don’t like is having the Raving Colossus story and have to pick one which is better for the deck. Either make it free or don’t add more Fate mechanics in places where it already exists. 10 Fate is too much for too little when comparing with ES and premium ones considering their there just to optimize the travel.

Spend fate to optimize things just to disable them because I spend fate on a different thing. And bating with a premium agent plot…? Not happy about this at all!

A relevant note from Patch Notes for those at the festival and with access to Agents:

3 Likes

Not sure I understand your position. How is having the Pale Tabernacle forcing you to turn off the Roving Colossus? Do you mean that the Colossus story is rendered obsolete in terms of EPA efficiency and having it active reduces the probability of drawing the newly available, better Pale Tabernacle cards? If that’s more important to you than the new, thematic narrative, you are probably set for disappointment with much of the premium content. I believe that most players don’t really care that much about deck optimization and go for variety instead, not optimal routine. In that sense, the possibility to turn cards like this off and on is a benefit, not a liability.
I’m also not convinced that the Colossus and Tabernacle stories are meant to “optimize” the Zee deck in any way. They just provide snippets of worldbuilding and beautiful text to encounter on your Zee journeys. And they’re part of the midgame content; they need not and indeed probably should not compete with the Stacks or Tracklayer City in terms of profitability.
And do you realize that you’re saying there’s too little value for the Fate price and that it also includes a novel Plot which you seem to actively want at the same time? Many of the Fate equipment pieces are more expensive while offering marginal “improvements” - how is this different?

Personally, I like the cards, their art and the connections to various niche qualities they bring. Seems like enough value and I was happy to buy it with both my characters.

I’ll be spending quite some time diving this year to stock up on some pieces of newly-duplicable equipment and collecting Vestigies of Starlit Reverie until I have 10. But even if I wouldn’t want that, I’d still be OK with just collecting the new corals and leaving for other business. Not every Festival needs to be aimed at everyone.

3 Likes

If Failbetter takes its usual approach, you will be able to buy the Colossus next year if you decide to buy the Tabernacle this year (or vice versa).