The Silver Tree?

I started it today.
Strange nobody talks about it, looks like a good chance to get 4th City lore.What do you think and do I need to watch out for anything?
How enjoyable is it?
edited by Percenila on 3/14/2015

it’s pretty grindy. if that’s not your thing, then the enjoyment factor is probably gonna go down a ton.

raise your trusted as much as you need to, and then cash it in; there’s a lot of give-and-take. and repetition.

Yeah. I started playing about a month ago… and stopped after about a week. I’m super-interested in the lore that it promises, but the grinding and repetition just make it a hefty slog for not enough progress in reward, certainly not at the early levels anyway. I might go back to it at some stage, but I doubt I’d have the enthusiasm to see it all the way through.

Do you recall how we came to that place? And they sang of answers and truth?

And we gazed upon the Fourth City with our own eyes. They barred the way to answers with labours and trapped us in monotony.

And the answers passed by as we buries our heads in tedium. If we could remember what we saw. If only we could remember.

Also, the person that made the Silver Tree is not in Failbetter anymore (I don’t know the circumstances), so I guess the game is kind of a frozen fossile from ancient times (for example I never finished it because at the very end I found what I really think is a bug -I wanted to side with the Interpreter but that option in the very last storylet was locked because… I had maximum level of relationship with the Interpreter, which doesn’t make any sense) and they couldn’t do much to solve it apparently.

I have the feeling that Failbetter is trying to ignore the Silver Tree as much as they can. And I think there is no lore really worth the detour, inside.

The writing is fun, though.

Did you know the author actually is a real Khan? You can even call her the Khan of Grinds, whose grind are nearly inescapable because her writing are good enough to be tempting.

shake fists at Emily St. Aubert again

Back on topic, assuming FBG hasn’t updated the game, the lore inside might be less relevant now due to the Forgotten Quarter revamps and what not.

You do get to experience the Fall in real time, so there’s that, but you’d learn more important things in Sunless Sea.

Honestly, I barely made it fifteen minutes in. The aesthetics were lovely, but the layout of the game itself was nowhere as intuitive as Fallen London, and I got too frustrated trying to figure out what I should do.

I personaly wish there was an incentive to play the Silver Tree, like and achievement that can be viewed on your Fallen London account or even a prize.

For me though, I find that in Fallen London I can be anything I want. In the Silver Tree you are a Monk and you have a few objectives to follow - whatever they are.

I had a few months where I was at a loss for things to do, so I’ve actually played the game through? things that I learned (spoilers ahead!):

  • it’s a culture that’s big on reciprocity. you are given gifts in exchange for things, and you give gifts in exchange for other things. or favors. or knowledge. et cetera.[/li][li]the Gracious Widow is the princess in this game, and she’s always been interested in immortality.[/li][li]the princess’ relationship with the huntress may be analogous to the Widow trying to adopt the street urchin in Fallen London?? but this is ambiguous and mysterious.[/li][li]it is totally possibly to kidnap a Master by rolling it up in a carpet. [/li][li]sometimes you have to get ahead with one person by screwing other people over???[/li][li]the specific deal of how the Fourth City got bartered to the 'Neath and for what is still lost on me.

this might be more helpful.

I played it through. It took me about 2 years, with huge gaps in-between when I didn’t play at all. I think the lore was really worth it - there is just no way you can hurry through it. I’d advise all beginners to be patient… stop whenever you’re not enjoying it anymore… of course, if you’re the forgetful type you should definitely make some notes then! ;-)

I will let you know if I remember to take notes!


Apparently they are cutting off Nex sales and action caps in April for Storynexus
. You might want to wait till then to go hog wild. Or it might not applies to Silver Tree, but one can hope.

I´ve finished the Silver Tree few days ago. I must say it gets repetitive really soon, but there are some nice pieces of lore and the writing drew me in. The ending was, at least for me, worth the occasional boredom.

I must be a raving lunatic because I played it twice (the latter time with all of the unlockable storylines) in a day - but good God, it would have been horrible without unlimited actions.

The lore is interesting, but it IS grindy like crazy. I really wished I could have saved state at my final point to play out the alternative endings.

I’m now playing Cabinet Noir and it feels less grindy - but Mongols and Musketeers are two things I’ve loved before, so I come in a bit biased.

Oh, my.
I was just looking at some Wikipedia pages when I found something. Look the Wikipedia page on William of Rubruck, if you’ve played The Silver Tree you will find yourself appreciating it so, so much.

I really enjoyed the writing in The Silver Tree, and I am sad that it isn’t more talked about. The grind was awful though, even with a thousand action.

Also, once you’ve finished playing, I highly recommend reading the account of the travel by William of Rubruck. It give some fascinating insight into the culture and opinion of a man living during the middle age, a Franciscan monk to be precise, and it give an idea of normal life in the Mongolian empire during the fourteen century, though it is heavily filtered through an european perspective (I guess you could say french perspective, since William was reporting to the king of France, Louis IX, and the county of Flanders, where he was born, belong to France at the time) . More importantly, it’s also a lot of fun to see how much of a judgmental person William was. He keep calling the Mongol a bunch of barbarian, he describe them as ugly and he believe christianity, what we would call today catholicism, to be superior to every religion, including some of the Nestorian, who are christian. The Mongol empire as clearly a rich culture and a multitude of customs, and William has respect for none of it. I don’t know if that attitude was common at the time (there is a lot of misconception about the middle age), but even if it was, it’s still really funny to read.

Also, there’s these crazy stories that keeps happening to him. Like, at one point, he meet and live for a time with a man who pretends to be a monk. He also has to deal with his interpreter, who I don’t think is the same interpreter as in the game, since he is described as a man and is drunk most of the time (seriously, go read it).