Whats the point of the renown items?

Fallen London
1

Title. I know some of the higher level ones are incredibly impressive, but all of the 10 renown ones seem… lackluster? Especially since it seems near impossible to grind up renown without having significant resources for the renown objects and all the favors you sink into them. Getting from Renown 5 (from the carnival) to renown 10 with a faction takes, if my math is correct, (edit: it wasn’t at first) 29-ish favors. Thats a lot of favors!

A handful of the items seem to be +4 stat weapons, which you get for free just via the MYN stories. Do they unlock cards or something else that I’m missing?
edited by Ms Rose on 12/11/2019

2

Renown 40 items are best in slot. Frequently without alternative.
Revolutionaries 25 is best in slot too. Bohemians 10 is unique (+1 Scandal body).
All other is… useless trash. FL is full of useless items and sometimes you cant even sell them!
edited by Waterpls on 12/11/2019

3

If your chief concern is Echo value or min/maxing, there might be an argument there. However, I can’t help but feel that that sort of evaluation misses the point entirely. The heart of Fallen London is its stories, and the central value of anything in it is narrative: the stories it tells, and the stories it enables. Even something as mechanically dry as item conversion is a vehicle for exposition; the conversion text for Luminosity items and Wild Words are the first hints a new player often gets at the game’s deeper mysteries. If you want to judge something’s value here, the real question is, what does it tell you?

Looking at the Renown 10 items, which perforce are the least mechanically exciting, one may find plenty of narrative value. Almost all of them help color in the factions–a particularly important office, given that they can be found while you’re still half a Surfacer and trying to find your way around the place. Several (e.g. the Barrel and the Gazette subscription) are delightfully humorous, and the Amber Cello is evocative and beautiful. (It is my favorite of the Renown items, hands down.) The Renown 25 items start to play on with some deeper material, also (with the Chelatic Mitten and the Constant Cufflinks) dipping into Sunless Sea territory, things that don’t normally appear in Fallen London. Finally, at Renown 40 (by which time, in fairness, you’re probably starting to penetrate the deep mysteries of the game), you get things like the Frost Moth and the Thunderbolt and–my God, what are they doing to that soul!?–that open up privileged information, and also mark you as a serious explorer of the Neath.

(You know, I didn’t realize until I did that little summary how carefully FB arranged the Renown items with an eye to exposition. I guess it’s easy to miss when you were playing during the conversion.)

So what is the point of Renown items? To teach you about the setting. To amuse you. To make nods toward other bits of the game, its history, and its mysteries. To fuel role-playing, for those so inclined. Also, occasionally, to give you a very impressive Transport.

I should note, even for the most hardened min/maxer (assuming there are any around here), that Hallowmas has made a regular habit of upgrading Renown companions. The Rubbery Bellringer, Unassuming Judge, Chap on the Corner, and Unassuming Ex-Privateer Charter Clerk have all gotten makeovers (twice, in one case), and it’s entirely probable that next Hallowas will see it happen again. It is particularly useful for the collectors out there that one could upgrade, e.g., the Clerk, go get another one, and upgrade that one, too before Hallowmas was out. (This is probably why–well, one of several reasons why–they have not given the same treatment to the Frost Moth. It would be a much larger affair to collect 7 favours and then hop over to the Tomb-Colonies and return to London before the end.)

4

That is an absolutely lovely explanation! I do really love the story lore of FL, and I do love exposition being put wherever possible.

My major ‘concern’ as it were, is that it takes a truly incredible amount of effort for a new player to reach that exposition/story. Grinding Renown can be really really hard! (Im doing it right now for the first time)

I guess it’d just feel nice if the early renown objects were just a tiny little bit more useful? I want to read all the stories and get all the lil lore bits, but when there’s things like the MYN stories or the POSI options that promise to unlock so much more content, I don’t really see myself sitting down and grinding out the renown items until I’m pretty deep into the game. The opportunity cost of resources and actions just feels like it can be used to unlock so much other interesting content for so much less effort!

Ultimately think if you got the renown 10 items at renown 5 or 6 I would 100% agree with you instead of just 90% agreeing with you.

5

Siankan i take your point, but i think you are a bit wrong. We all like the stories. But not all of us are collectors. And i am anti-collector. For example, i do not want 50-100-150 Companions in my inventory. Because it would be a real pain to find useful ones in that multitude of mementos. I want as less as possible without losing mechanical benefits. And for no reason you cant sell most of useless items.
edited by Waterpls on 12/11/2019

6

I find myself agreeing wholeheartedly with Siankan. While I went the anti-collector route for some months, purely because I wanted an uncluttered 'Myself" tab, I discovered that every single item told or hinted at a story. And since stories are the soul of FL, I let them gather again. After all, for many of these items/ stories, you get their true significance way down the road. Now I see the cluttered tab as a library.
Let me add that the FL content isn’t infinite. There are many of us who automatically got high Renown by converting Connections. The smaller ‘gifts’ were like extras we discovered on the way. I found myself getting them, though they were mechanically useless, just to get a bit of lore.

So it might help if you don’t see it as an upgrading effort. You are grinding for the 40 Renown item, and midway, FL has hidden some small gifts. It’s not like you can get to 40 without going past 10 and 25 anyway. And after all, this is a game were grinds often yield nothing of mechanical significance. Scholar of the Correspondence? Poet Laureate? The Cider? They might take years, and offer nothing shattering in terms of items. I think this is a conscious game design decision. I know I wanted a storylet/lore bit at the end of all these grinds, but didn’t care for a statistically strong item.

7

I can certainly agree that it can be a pain to find the right possessions sometimes, though I’ll stop short of saying that FB’s done anything &quotfor no reason.&quot I have too often found that to mean &quotfor reasons I didn’t understand at the time.&quot

On gaining Renown, Jolanda’s right. Favour sources are, by and large, random. Trying to grind them is, by and large, and exercise in futility, and if you think of it as a grind you are going to become frustrated (especially since the numbers needed to reach 10, which seem so large right now, are a tiny drop in a very large bucket). Similarly, if you think of the Renown items as the goal of your grind, then you are going to feel like you’ve done a lot of work for very, very little–something that, I think, you’re starting to feel. My suggestion: take things as they come. Choose Favour-granting options when they come available, but treat these as little bonuses you happen upon while you’re doing something else. Similarly, I would look at the Renown items not as targets but as lagniappe, something extra you pick up on the way, marking a stage on the journey and serving as a memento of where you’ve been. If you approach Favours and Renown in that fashion, I think you’ll find them less frustrating and more exciting.