Sunless Sea - Kickstarted! From the creators of Fallen London

I assume the Will helps with dying, but good Lord is it a pain to get to.

Why do I need a fancy house to write a damned will? I own a fricking ship, I think that’s enough of an asset to warrant a will of some sort.

Well, I think with respect to Darkest Dungeon, it starts to matter more later on when you have invested more time and money into upgrading an individual character. There’s a big difference between a character fresh off the wagon and a level 3+ with a bunch of upgraded skills.

I haven’t picked up SS yet, but am rather intrigued by it. I don’t really need something else to play right now.

What I meant is that it doesn’t take more than experience grinding to bring another character up to par. Upgrade costs (as long as you have the experience) are minor, and grinding for experience is not as much of a setback (since you are grinding for everything in that game to upgrade the town anyway). Basically, losing a guy doesn’t really modify how you are playing for too long. Maybe the endgame is different, but that’s the endgame. I can’t even imagine what dying at the endgame of Sunless Sea could mean…

perhaps a “cloning” mechanic might not have been out of place, where you could preserve your progress at intervals at great cost. While you could argue that would remove some of the tension, it might also have allowed a certain freedom to try something crazy.

Because when you die, it’s usually because your ship has sunk or otherwise been lost.

Although there certainly are other ways to die. Quite a few of them are obvious and/or explicitly warned about, mind you.

Having updated my stories, I’m now starting to really grok the gameplay and get absorbed in the world a lot more.

I only played a day or two in Fallen London, but this is starting to get some hooks into me.

Ooy, I almost pushed things to far. I got all the way to the far-side of the map, and then realized my terror level was getting pretty high. Trying to get back to London, it ended up going over 90 and then one of my crew members went nuts and I ended up having to shoot them. Then crew members started disappearing from the ship late at night, pushing me below the minimum level of crew needed to keep the ship going at normal speeds. With the terror level heading toward 100% (which I assume means game over …) and my ship creeping along because I didn’t have enough crew left I ended up goosing the speed by dumping extra barrels of oil into the engine even though I wasn’t quite sure we had enough to get back. I figured if I ran out of fuel that was a better option than having the terror level go over 100% (at least in beta after running out of fuel, you can start dumping supplies into the boilers at a 2 supply for 1 fuel ration, and having very few crew left, the supplies weren’t going down very fast). I was nervous because I’ve had at least one engine fire before from pushing the engines to redline, and I can’t remember if it increases terror, but I certainly wouldn’t be surprised. I did manage to make a stop on one island that I knew had a picnic option that reduced terror by 3 which helped a smidge.

I ended up creeping back into London low on fuel and just under the insanity limit. Unfortunately from a financial perspective the whole trip was a loss (I had 1000 echoes before I started outfitting for the trip and I now have around 650 echoes although I have gobs of fuel barrels care of the admiralty from turning in port reports). But I did find some story connections that connect a number of islands, so hopefully I’ll be able to solve some mysteries on my next voyage out.

Probably the fact that I turned off my headlamp in a bunch of places when wandering beasties or ships showed up and started taking an interest in me didn’t help my terror levels. I probably should get a better ship before I try venturing out that far again.

Two things.

  1. Yes, the game is slow, sloooooooow, slow slow slow. It’s not fast.
  2. Considering that the game is quite purposefully not respecting your time and making a willful statement that it doesn’t give a toss about it, I don’t think that the permadeath hat sits quite well with it. I’m only on my second captain and I haven’t actually switched to the less hardcore mode but I still couldn’t imagine I’d sit through exploring all this stuff over again.
    It’s quite a conundrum because having permadeath helps sustain the needed tension in the balance between risk/reward, but at the same time expecting people to acceptingly throw away hours upon hours of progress, after what may be a single botched encounter, does seem optimistic at best.

A middle ground might be no permadeath, no manual saving but timed saves such as once every hour and upon exiting ofc.

The default speed should be the “F” boost speed.

Anyways here is my speculative redesign: if they want to go all in on a writing-centric game + have you spend a lot of time navigating and feeling uneasy/bored, do both at the same time. Give me text in between ports that I have to read, maybe apropos of my destination. It would float out of the waves or something. Kennings, sea shanties, whatever. Then, instead of tying the events at port to straight up stat-based dice rolls, make success in those scenarios at least partially contingent on my comprehension and analysis of that interstitial text a la King of Dragon Pass.

I really am open to games doing new things with pacing but right now the mechanics are too threadbare to consistently get you anywhere besides frustration. It does work a little bit sometimes though and it is really tantalizing!

I have hacked up the config files to greatly reduce fuel and food consumption, quadruple the ship speed and increase the hold size of the starting ship. Much more enjoyable!

SR 10

Nikolaj > JoshL

I feel it could have gone either way, with the decks we had at the end. I got a good draw that did the 26 damage I needed to win, but I think it could have gone the other way too.

It should at least let you look at the damn map while moving. If I have 5 minutes of straight line sailing ahead of me, at least let me look at the damn map without pausing the game.

Good idea…

Also a good idea…

Wrong thread.

This is where my first Captain ran out of fuel, but the way. Heartbreaking. I did some stuff with the gods but it made things… worse…

Haha, so it is. Sorry about that, guys. I was just reading your thoughts about this game, while waiting for my opponent to take his turn. Forgot to navigate to the right thread. :p

An enjoyable end for my first captain. When docking at fallen london once, this shady figure offered me a substantial amount of free fuel and supplies. Of course I took it! Why not? The next time I dock he tells me to take some ‘cargo’ with me to somewhere or other. Of course I accept, thinking there’s no harm. Why not? The third time I dock (having not delivered the cargo since I couldn’t see it on my adventures), customs inspects my ship (note to self: always carry enough echoes around as an emergency bribe), takes the ‘cargo’, and then this shady figure proceeds to kill me and the crew (after failing a harsh dice roll).

Oh well!

Yeah, one must be careful with that guy. One time he gave me a package and a substantial amount of money. I figured the money was in return for delivering the cargo and spent it on supplies. When I got to the destination it turned out the money was part of the cargo I was supposed to deliver – of course I didn’t have it any more having spent it – oops. When I got back to London, I got beat up.

I regret saying “no thanks” to that guy early on, which meant that he never propositioned me again. He is supposedly a good source of income.

Also, what’s the deal with names in this thing? I am told to go to “Shepard’s Wash” and I have a good 80% of the map revealed right now so I was scrolling around trying to find it. No such luck. I do have “Shepard’s Isles” as an area with an entirely different port name and when I go there, that’s it. No reference to “Shepard’s Wash” but it was indeed the correct destination. Just fucking use the name on the map.