Yesterday I had an odd experience. My Ambition is Nemesis, and in the course of pursuing it I had to rob a certain Jingling Servant of her keys.
Being far too soft for Nemesis really, I succeeded on the second attempt in subduing the lady without harming her – and promptly lost three of my four Hard-Earned Lessons, which seems harsh, unless she turns out to be a Black Ribbon duellist in her spare time. I hadn’t ticked the box to invest a HEL, either. They just vanished into the ether, with the announcement “You have used three Hard-Earned Lesson”. I can’t see any mention of this annoying side-effect on fallenlondon.wikia, so I assume it’s an anomaly.
So, has anyone else been hit by the Phantom Second-Chance Siphoner of Old London Town? Could there be a secret gang of urchins so skilled that they can actually pickpocket one’s luck?
The wiki page itself doesn’t mention this, but a wiki comment does: "It says here that the storylet unlocks with 3 hard-earned lessons. That’s probably true (because the lessons are taken from you), but this requirement doesn’t appear on the storylet itself (in the right bottom corner). "
Apparently this has been true since early 2013 and no one’s reported the odd behavior to Failbetter. Correct the sins of the past. There’s no reason I can think of for a hidden cost.
Thanks for finding those comments, I’d overlooked them. I anticipated that a quest for revenge would be violent and cost me dearly. A storylet so brutal and unfair that I’m expected to burn 3 Second Chances just to stand a fair chance of completing it wouldn’t be so outlandish in Nemesis, as long as it happened very rarely and warned me in advance.
But it can’t be right that getting the keys from a domestic servant without killing her takes as many second chances as fighting a professional assassin on a trapeze over a spider-pit. While on fire.
From the comments, it appears that casting aside my scruples and killing the lady without preamble doesn’t need any Hard-Earned Lessons at all, which does suggest that the 3 HEL loss for taking the gentler course is an oversight.
Do any actions formally require Second Chances to unlock? Once I’m certain that this is an unfixed bug, I think I will indeed drop Failbetter an email.
It’s either a bug that it removes your Lessons, or it’s a bug that it doesn’t warn you in advance. Send them an email — Failbetter won’t bite unless you catch Alexis in a hungry mood, and he’s just eaten a vicar so you should be fine.
In case anyone is curious about this, I got a prompt and friendly reply from Failbetter, who confirmed that the sudden penalty for not chilling a servant you’ve only just seen is a feature, not a bug, and is intended to make it more difficult to remain roughly moral whilst pursuing revenge (if you don’t play hardball all the time, Nemesis needs some card-juggling to stop Ruthless leaking away). The player only sees the less violent option if they have 3+ Hard-Earned Lessons in hand.
I still hope it doesn’t happen again and again, as I hadn’t planned to rack up an incidental bodycount worthy of Batman – at least, not yet. My own gut feeling is that the first time it happens, the game should tell you why, especially if the penalty is unusual enough to potentially look like a bug, and the triggering choice is invisible to players with few or no Second Chances.
This is the first time I’ve encountered a Second Chance-locked choice (let alone one with a penalty) anywhere in the game, and I typically carry a good handful of Sudden Insights and Confident Smiles (it’s not quite the first time I’ve met a choice where even ‘success’ penalises you with no warning; I was aware that a few such nasty surprises are out there). I’m now rather curious as to how many such Second Chance-locked choices are tucked away in odd corners, if they’re restricted to Ambition storylines, and how many Chances are typically lost if you pick them.
In the meantime, I guess I’ll just have to be prepared for the occasional unassuming servant or glazed honey-addict with a quicker punch than a mantis shrimp’s.
Write out 100 times: I must not kill everyone I meet…I must not kill everyone I meet…
Why not? As long as you don’t permanently kill them, it’s just a minor inconvenience. They’ll probably file it under "unexpected chess practice"… ;)
Why not? As long as you don’t permanently kill them, it’s just a minor inconvenience. They’ll probably file it under "unexpected chess practice"… ;)[/quote]
The official line is that I slit only the gizzards of the (mostly) deserving, but the truth is closer to Repetitive Strain Injury.
At the palace, when I investigated the Veteran Privy Counsellor’s motivations for asking me to compose an scandalous opera, I also lost 3 sudden insights after succeeding on the investigation.
I still don’t see the point in hiding this effect. Weird.
Nemesis leads you to violence, True Murder, Memory Trespass, Chess for the Wrong Queen, Mass Spirifing, and REDACTED. The worst of it is avoidable, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you lose more chances by showing mercy.