Weekly Fallen London Questions, 12/06/2023

Here’s this week’s thread for quick Fallen London questions!

I’m a PoSI with 136 unmodified Watchful and I’m doing the second carousel at the University. At what point should I progress the story, and in doing so, lock that carousel? I’m a very cautious person, and my worry is that I’ll progress the story too soon without reaping all of the benefits.

Look into the details of this carousel on the wiki. I don’t remember the details but there is an option to repeatedly speak to porters to gain sudden insights. Then you can turn in 5 sudden insights for a big boost in watchful. The exact increase in watchful varies but it is around one level for each turn in of 5 sudden insights. You can grind this until your watchful is at 200 quite easily. You have 64 levels to go so that is only around 64*5 = 320 + 64 = 384 actions to get your watchful to the max. Well worth it considering how slow it is raised by other methods.

I have a newbie alt to do the Light Fingers ambition and right now all of my stats are around 30. I need 300 Surface Currency to get into Wolfstack Docks and I haven’t the first idea where to get it. The wiki doesn’t have any early-game suggestions, does that mean there aren’t any early-game options? Does it let you in for free if you grind your dangerous to 60 or do you still have to pay then? Thanks much!

Keep doing the Dangerous Making your Name stories to get in for free. The first two are in the department of menace eradication, the third on watchmakers hill (then your lodgings) and the fourth also on watchmakers hill.

Ambitions are long-running storylines that are meant the span the entire development of your character, from the very early-game all the way through the end-game. So sometimes your character will reach a point where it’s just more than what they can handle right now, and they need to either develop or unlock content or grind to progress. That’s what you’re seeing now.

You will gain access to Wolfstack Docs for free as you progress the Making Your Name storyline for Dangerous. It’s possible to buy or rent access earlier, and you totally can if you want, but you’re likely to find that whatever Light Fingers content is waiting for you is just beyond what you can handle at the moment.

What disadvantages does Banditry in the Upper River have aside from getting wounds instead of Rumours when taking the train?

It alters the difficulty of a card (makes one option harder, one option easier), makes an undiscardable card appear, and if it gets to 8, you get kidnapped by bandits (not an entirely unprofitable experience, but it can be inconvenient).

After the bandit storyline is finished 8 Banditry still unlocks an autofire card that has no good options on it. (Except that it resets banditry to 4, basically you have to pay off your banditry debt)