Here’s this week’s thread for questions, ceremonial, officers, for the asking of!
You write a new intro for this thread every week. Do you come up with ideas ahead of time and have them queued up, or do you craft new ones on the spot?
These are all improvised. If I were planning them in advance, well, I won’t say they’d be better, but they would be more consistent.
Where do moon-pearls come from? And how do they tell time down here?
Here’s a thing I wonder about. I suppose the pure and un-wounded would be happier to avoid my question, and those that do not understand or do not recognize the name are better left to just avoid it. Light the Taper; what is it, and why is it so expensive? At first when I accidentally ran into it, I just caught a glimpse of the necessary items before avoiding further spoilers. Now that I have reached such a depth in self-annihilation I have once again sought out the page and read that it doesn’t actually do anything apart from giving me a boost in seeking worth two weeks and also a big boost to watchful. Either way even before I knew anything about it I started collecting scraps to afford the only item that can be afforded in this way, the veils velvet, while also slowly working my way towards the Blood and Theorem. Should I give up on that? Is it necessary? Probably not, but I want to know what’s up with such an expensive thing…
[quote=Siegron]Here’s a thing I wonder about. I suppose the pure and un-wounded would be happier to avoid my question, and those that do not understand or do not recognize the name are better left to just avoid it. Light the Taper; what is it, and why is it so expensive? At first when I accidentally ran into it, I just caught a glimpse of the necessary items before avoiding further spoilers. Now that I have reached such a depth in self-annihilation I have once again sought out the page and read that it doesn’t actually do anything apart from giving me a boost in seeking worth two weeks and also a big boost to watchful. Either way even before I knew anything about it I started collecting scraps to afford the only item that can be afforded in this way, the veils velvet, while also slowly working my way towards the Blood and Theorem. Should I give up on that? Is it necessary? Probably not, but I want to know what’s up with such an expensive thing…[/quote]Light a Taper is not meant to be experienced as part of the Seeking road, though it’s possible. In the original Seeking before it was closed, the method of obtaining St Cerise’s Candle was by obtaining a Waxwail Knife through Knife-and-Candle, then returning that Waxwail Knife for 77 Iron Knife Tokens (the text references an ancient bargain, which I believe is connected to the Advocate of Illumination in modern Seeking). These 77 Iron Knife Tokens could then be exchanged for Cerise.
Clearly, the process has changed with the end of Knife-and-Candle and the return of Seeking. Consequently, players who already obtained Cerise during Old Seeking could not experience the new self-sacrificial content. Consequently, these players were given the ability to light St Cerise’s Candle, which rewards the exact items needed to Light a Taper. For Seekers, this allows them to experience the new content and still be rewarded for their previous achievement with a unique option and a slight boost to SMEN. If they chose to not pursue the new Seeking, it is quite a tremendous reward for both remaining with the game for such a long time and for their past achievement.
Well god damn if that doesn’t clear things up on the go. Gotta say, thank you for that delicious friend, but even so I am still quite curious on the text of it. And since I have been collecting scraps just for that, and I have no other ideas of what else to buy apart from that, I believe I will still continue collecting slowly for the velvet, even though who knows what yet awaits me when I take into consideration a specific isle and a specific number of candles. Either way thank you for clearin it out!
Well, the fall did take Big Ben with it…
"Down here, these are the only way to know what phase the moon is in."
The appearance of the pearls changes to match the moon, so with some sensitive engineering you could use this to power a clock.
As for where they come from, well, they are categorized as "Zee-Treasures", but they do have a linguistic similarity to the monsters known as moon-misers, who live on the Neath’s roof.
A forum poster last year had a rather fun and semi-plausible hypothesis.
P.S. I’ve started collecting small lore questions like this one on a google doc.
edited by TheThirdPolice on 8/7/2018
I got another question, actually. Hopefully it ain’t annoyin, heh. So at the university we have a semi-reliable option to manufacture searing enigmas. Since I’ve made it clear in my last post that I’m looking forward to owning an impossible theorem for the Taper, I want to of course start getting a good amount of enigmas. One thing though bothers me, because even though I kind of did the calculations myself, many people still complain that that option is an utter sinkhole of echoes. Why’s that? On the wiki page it says that it requires 25 Uncanny Incunabula ( 25 x 12.5 = 312.5 E) and that the end-result formula goes like this: 1 + Watchful/50 (rounded); so that means that if my watchful is higher than 225 it should round it down in the end to 5 searing enigmas, and 62.5 x 5 is also 312.5 echoes, making the process not cost you any echoes at all, in case you succeed. So why are people so against it? Even though I still am dazzled over turning enigmas into theorems, that clearly is a loss of over 1k echoes if you wanna sell it.
Because it gives you a RANDOM number of enigmas between 1 and your watchful/50. So you get effectively half that.
Oh.
Speaking very generally and without spoilers, how have people found the Inconvenient Aunt and Gold Frame, Black Painting Fate-locked journeys? Worth undertaking? I’m having them come up frequently and interested in exploring some Fate-locked content further. Thanks delicious friends!
I was a bit disappointed with Secrets Framed in Gold … for whatever reason the story telling just seemed a little off to me. Thematically, it is rather dark and puts a tough choice to you. On the upside, you stop getting those Frame cards when you’re done.
The Aunt story was not memorable, but one of the end options puts a card in your deck the will, depending on luck, either refresh 10 actions (~30%) or give you a small amount of wounds (~70%). I rather enjoy having this card in my deck for a happy little surprise refresh from time to time.
Does the Fate-locked story about Jack (the one with all the warnings and disclaimers) affect your quirks at all?
Remember that if you join the Dilmun Club, get to the Fifth Coil of the Labirynth, and buy at least about 700-1000 echoes worth of orphans, you can grind Enigmas not at a loss, not breaking even, not even making "some" profit, but as simply the most profitable grind in the game by a wide marging. Optimal cycle is with about 18k-20k worth of urchins giving around 2.19EPA, but diminishing returns kick in pretty quickly and I think you only need a bit under 1000E to break 2EPA.
Everyone praises SFiG, but I personally found it a little bit underwhelming. I don’t even recall the details anymore. I guess you do get a possibly difficult choice, but unlike in some other cases you can just undo any damage later on with some more Fate, which I feel really cheapens the outcome; and while the narrative has some implications, I don’t think it reveals any particular lore (though that might just be me not remembering porperly).
I quite enjoyed the concept of the Aunt story, but otherwise it’s also nothing special, and you’ll probably find it rather forgettable if you aren’t already interested in your Aunt. As already mentioned, however, it’s generally considered worth it even if only for the card it unlocks.
A minor correction: you can’t reset SFiG with Fate. Whatever you do, stays done.
True - maybe I should have made it clearer that I meant “undo the damage” literally, not as a metaphor for resetting. What you do does stay done but you can just magic away all the negative consequences to both have your cake and eat it, if you’re just willing to fork over the dosh.
Pyro, now you got me generally confused. I’m not sure whether I’m getting trolled here or something, but I notice that heading to the fifth coil is ‘‘Impossible!’’, but at the same time I have kind of dug around when it comes to the Dilmun Club and I noticed that it is currently at 7, which the wiki says is that I am waiting for a very common card which apparently must’ve been eaten by a rat on it’s way to me, but it also says I need to have a quality called ‘‘Successful terms as a governor’’…What’s all that about? Is it even possible to access the fifth coil? What kind of ‘‘mystery’’ am I missin out on here?
edited by Siegron on 8/8/2018
The branch for getting into the Fifth Coil legitimately is a different branch to the one that you’re seeing that is labelled impossible. I’m not sure why it’s like that, but it is! Rest assured that when you have progressed to the point where access to the Fifth Coil is possible for you, that branch will disappear and be replaced by one that you will be able to play.
Terms as Governor are gained through being kicked out out of the Empress’ Court - progress the Persuasive storyline to play that story!