I don’t want to derail the thread but if I were to start Sunless Sea now would one recommend permadeath on or off? Does one option provide a better experience?
I love rouguelikes/lites and enjoy permadeath in most games but I remember whisperings of it making Sea a bit of a slog…or is that incorrect?
In my opinion the story-driven nature of the Sunless games is served very poorly by permadeath.
I agree. In general I don’t like permadeath, except in very specific conditions, in games like Dead Cells or Slay the Spire, that are designed from zero for the concept. Every run is short, and each one can be very different.
Permadeath is weird, in that it seems like a hard mode… but it isn’t, it isn’t ‘harder’ than the same game without permadeath in the usual way, it won’t have more enemies or less resources for the players, it’s just… more unforgiving. It’s like the bad part of playing a game in Hard without the good parts.
I really like this game but I’m getting annoyed by how often I die. Even with +10 hull I’m constantly getting killed just trying to explore, and even with the ability to reload it’s costing me a TON of game play time, and rather than feeling thrilled by the idea of being killed exploring the unknown, it’s starting to drag my interest in the game down. I even went so far as to reduce resource consumption to the easier mode and add gentle aim control, but it’s a war of attrition. I loot some salvage, a mad seafarer teleports on top of me and opens fire. I kill him, losing about 12 hull. I move forward, and a big fight is happening between two factions, and trying to scoot past them I take a shot to the hull by the faction I’m allied with. I assist them in the fight, taking no more damage, only to have them spaz out and start shooting at nothing while I’m looting the salvage, and I take a few more hits. And on and on, until I realize I have 6 hull left and probably 10 minutes of travel to get to the port I was heading to.
Progress is so slow. I’m level 5 now, but I struggle to have more than 200+ gold at any given time, purchasing fuel and supplies like I do. I even have upgraded my ship thanks to completing a few quests and getting a solid 1400 gold windfall, and sometimes I think I’m kicking ass and having a blast and the game is always quick to remind me, it’s decided to be a really hard game with little reward for it.
I’ll keep at it, but after 5 hours in-game I wonder if I’m really making any progress at all.
I hated sunless sea because I felt like punishing you for wanting to play. Doesn’t sound like this is much better.
I’ve managed to get to a good place after some death and reloading.
Port reports are good basic survival income early on. Don’t forget to get one each time you visit a port. I believe you can do it again every so many days.
Prospects and bargains are the real income source. Visit the bazaar at every port and always check available prospects. You have four slots so don’t hesitate to grab some early even if you don’t have cash to buy early on.
The nectar resource for the initial prospect you can get at the main hub, can be found for free by exploring and finding some bee hive things to harvest it from.
Bazaars have random bargains. Finding a bargain for something you have a prospect for is how you can make real money. It’s worth keeping a note of the last prospect and/or bargain each bazaar port had.
For my first ship upgrade I went with the one that allows you to butcher the space whale things for supplies. It has been useful. I recommend finding a port near where they gather and practicing hunting them. They are great dodge practice. I went out and battled them until I died, reloaded, and repeated several times just to practice combat. Hunting hasn’t been a real money maker but every supply crate helps. Can’t speak to the effectiveness of mining.
Even if all you manage to do in an early life is fill out part of the map just that is worth it. Once you have the inner ports mapped out you can make good starter cash in a new life just by visiting and getting a report from each. This initial tour should be used to pick up prospects to spend your new cash on.
I’ve done or am doing all the things you recommended, I think they are all good tips.
However, my problem with the game as it stands now if the idea of losing progress. Getting killed 15 minutes after I leave port and having nothing I just accomplished mean anything is just killing me. On a personal level, I really hate the feeling of having to re-tread ground I previously covered (this actually reminds me of the Wargroove thread, and the idea that I’m not allowed to save where I want and as such, if I fail, the penalty is having to do the same stuff over again and hope this time I succeed). It’s possible this aspect of the game is actually better when your death just means rolling up a new captain, but I have a feeling not - then I’d just be re-doing these early quests over and over, and already twice was plenty.
For combat and movement in general things got better when I realized the side scoot wasn’t just for dodging bullets. Thrust plus side scoot makes for quick diagonal movement to zoidberg the f out of an area. For those battles between faction ships that spray bullets everywhere I usually scoot around as quickly as possible giving them a wide berth. I’ve rarely been hit unless I’m hanging around to loot the loser.
Not being able to save for long stretches sucks. There’s no two ways around that.
The death mechanic at least seems far more forgiving than what I played of Seas. It did help my enjoyment of the game when I decided to break the seal and let my first captain die.
Yep. Same here. I want to love these games, but they take too long for what they are, and they’re more opaque than they really need to be.
So far this seems far more accessible than Sunless Sea. It’s still slow, but I like that as a design decision now permadrath is out.
Totally. The names are all consistent, so easier to keep track of the stories. The journal is useful; you don’t have to keep a separate notebook of where to find what commodity. The interface is less spread out and easier to grok.
I’m curious what happens when you die. I’m playing merciful, but I’m considering letting my captain die in order to get one of the other ambitions. What can you carry over to your next captain? I know you can keep everything you’ve got in the bank, but not sure what else. I think in Sunless Sea you could choose to keep your map, your sovereigns, or your ship or something like that. Is this similar?
Here’s what I found on Failbetter’s site:
In SUNLESS SKIES, we’ve swapped out Unforgiving for Legacy mode. In Legacy mode, your Captain still suffers whatever death they’ve brought on themselves, but they will also pass a lot more to their successor. Including:
- Half their Sovereigns
- The contents of their Bank
- Their locomotive
- Story items, based on your prior Captain’s affiliations
- Half their experience points (see below)
- Your prior Captain’s map, including everything they’d discovered before their last dock at a major port
Players can also still choose to play in Merciful mode. Upon death, you may reload to the last port you docked at, brushing off your grisly end as unsubstantiated rumours.
I’m not sure if this means that if I choose to play in Merciful mode, I can still choose “legacy” upon death and pass all that stuff on to my next captain.
On Merciful mode, if you die you’re given the choice of either accepting the death of your captain and moving on with a new captain and his/her inheritances…or returning to your last autosave.
I’m playing on Legacy and I miraculously still haven’t died yet, but I kinda wish I’d chosen Merciful. If I lose half my experience when dying, does that mean I’ll lose half my levels too?
The game also tells you very early on that cardinal directions mean nothing. Stop exploring east. ;)
Hmm, in my game, the cardinal directions have been accurate. But the directions aren’t accompanied by advice on how far out to search…
Ok, so I finally started the game. The setting is the star here, of course. There is a gameplay contrivance that is pretty silly, you are a captain that somehow don’t know where they are the main ports, you start not even knowing where the hell is London. It’s done, of course, in exchange of having more focus on exploration.
Still it can be maddening, when in the first mission you have to go to Port Prosper to the NW, and you can’t be sure if you haven’t reached it yet, or maybe you passed by slightly to the right or to the left and you should go back and search in the area, because you know the general direction but no the distance. It’s NW close, or NW and far away?
Also, a tutorial said I can sell in every port and only buy specific stuff in small ports. I wish that was true, because I have on my hold 1 of ‘barrel of unseasoned hours’ that I can’t sell, even if I can buy more instead.
No they are. It tells you they still use them.
You sure? Because I was told Magdalene’s was due west of New Winchester, and it’s almost due northeast. And Port Avon was supposed to be Northwest, but instead is due south.
Is there a north marked on the map or are we assuming north is up? It’s possible directions are not wrong but north isn’t always straight up?
Directions I’ve gotten in my game were sort of on target to north/up but would be more accurate if north were tilted ~45deg to the left of the screen. That may be just a coincidence though.