Sunless Sea/Fallen London Discussion Thread

Keep this alive.

I just found out about this today in a thread about giant monsters. Got Fallen London on my phone, and Sunless Sea on Steam, so far pretty damn intrigued!

...fuck I feel like a shill. Wait this isn't /v/, I'm aloud to enjoy things here!

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.

Polythreme a Fucked.

Like, seriously. Fucked.

What the shit.

>>IN POLYTHREME THE BED I SLEPT ON WAS A SLAVE. THE ROOM WHERE I SLEPT WAS HACKED FROM SCREAMING STONE. THE WATER I DRANK BEGGED ME TO STOP. THEY PAID ME IN COIN THAT PLOTTED MY DOWNFALL. THE MEMORIES ARE TROUBLING. THIS PLACE IS BETTER.

Who?

The Fallen London and Sunless Sea games only succeed in making me want to know more about the setting. Both games are pretty meh, but they have a great fucking setting.

RPG or board game fucking when?

I loved the Fallen London webgame until I hit the paywall, would definitely like to set a game there.

The other lands were suitably bizarre, I liked how they didn't go generic fantasyland or even muh aliums there.

Are you saying that because you've actually killed Mt. Nomad... or did you get that far into the lore without bumping into the living mountain?

Mt. Nomad is the Drowned King's daughter, yeah?

Wherever you run one user

No. She's Stone's daughter. Mountain begets mountain.

Mt. Nomad is the niece, by marriage, of him, though.

And that's because the King married a sea urchin.

Yeah but frankly there is something to say in having them all stuck in what amounts to, in Sunless Sea at least, a roguelite visual novel.

The fact that you have to go so fucking far and so fucking hard to get some certain skerricks of story make them feel important in a way that reading a plot box doesn't. You have to work very, very hard to find out things like what the fuck Frostfound is about, or what the hell is up with Kingeater Castle. you get cool game-only moments that don't work with unlimited freedom, like showing up at Kigneater Castle, and the options being lose your mind, eat your crew, or die. And having extremely hard-to-learn things makes all of the things that have no explanation, like Irem, feel all the more mysterious - as though there is a reason but you will never know it.

Plus the sheer level of commitment it takes to get some stories, like the Seeker storyline that existed specifically and explicitly to constantly fuck people over in calamitous ways to earn skerricks of unsatisfying story text, means you get cool genuine mysteries that feel special with no gameplay rewards needed. Or things like the way that even though like 20 people at least have gone North by now, none of them have broken what happens up there, purely because a small textbox asked them not to share it.

I really want to get back into playing Sunless Sea, but fuck, does that game require loads of time. I dream about buying the dreadnought, but getting any money is so ridiculously hard. I've spent hours grinding the Salt Lions and abusing Pigmote Island for refueling/food, then the bloody Lions ran dry and now idk how to make any considerable profit anymore. Not to mention not having a lot of time to put into it.
Does anyone around here have any tips?

You gotta get them trade routes user. Be prepared to sink IRL months into that shipping; you want to get good don't you?
memery aside, I stopped playing the game for the same time related reasons, it's a great game with great lore but so much of it is absurdly time consuming to get.

for your actual question though, I was able to save up for some of the better stuff in the game by doing the Merchant Venturer's requests since those have pretty good payout. Once those dry up though you kind of have to do trade routes, which necessitate you doing some of the more convoluted quests to unlock the top-tier equipment that you need to make said routes really profitable.

also IIRC the advice is that you stick with the starting ship unless you have something incredibly pressing to do, since everything else eats fuel and supplies too fast for an early-game player to deal with.

It isn't a trading game, which is why trading kind of sucks unless you really push it.

Really, the best way to make money is keep doing stories, use what you can, sell what you can't.

The Dreadnought kind of sucks anyway. The second-best ship is better in almost all ways. The steam-yacht from Venderbight is better if you don't care about fighting.

That first line really scared me, because a lot of the other stuff I read online basically did amount to that.

I see, I remember picking up and doing some of these requests, but getting terribly lost in the zee when I first did them. Top tier equipment definitely needed, I'll look into that, thanks!
And yep, I still didn't buy another ship, hell I didn't even upgrade it. Also I'm so cheap that I tend to travel with my spotlight turned off to save fuel (and because I don't want to fight those damn jellyfishes and sharks every 1 minute of travel). From what I've seen, it's easier to deal with the terror than to waste loads of money on fuel.
But I didn't know that about the other ships eating more fuel/supplies, thanks!

Trading is indeed kinda boring, especially because the profit you make is marginally small at best... if any at all.

Will keep that in mind about the ship. Mostly I'm guilty of wanting the dreadnought for the achievement.

I'll try to keep doing stories and merchant venture stuff then, thanks for the tips anons!

Have some Thalassophobia.

>Top tier equipment definitely needed, I'll look into that, thanks!
It helps that most of this is gained through pretty good if somewhat hard storylines, so it's not like you're going to be grinding echoes all the way everywhere (contrast to Fallen London)

>hell I didn't even upgrade it.
this I would recommend though. just some of the basic cheap upgrades to the ship cannon will have you able to take out pirate ships very easily if you can maneuver yourself behind them. Hunting pirates is a great way to get supplies mid-trip, and it'll mean you don't have to fear them either. Also you only take collision damage from rocks and zee beasts, so you can stick your prow up the pirate's butt and hammer them with your cannons.
as long as they don't have rear-mounts at least, and the common pirates don't.

Oh and I never tried it but I imagine if you have an heir to let you keep 100% of your money, you could technically farm the Sea Lions forever just killing yourself every time you ran out.
Not very fun and kind of cheesy though.

,,,but not always

Bunp

You can snag a couple Artifacts at the Temple of Apis on Visage whenever you have spare Something Awaits You.

I prefer The Revelation.

Here's something for y'all. Remember, the map shifts on death save for those areas to the far left and those on the "continents".
If you've never seen a land before and don't want to google or are a passing user who's never seen the Zee before (and don't want to google) feel free to ask in thread.
Note that maps are subject to updates as new islands are added. This should be complete though.

I would usually do a full round the map circuit, making sure to hit every known lorn fluke spawn point. The cores are valuable, but you'll need a better engine to kite effectively, and if you REALLY want to be strong enough to reliably fight high level monsters you'll need too playthroughs to get both the best engine and cannon.

Is that the same thing as the end goal you choose at chargen? Cause I went with writing the zong of the zee, which was super fun and gratifying to accomplish, I literally stopped playing cause I was too involved to retire my captain after so much work...

It's a Fallen London thing.

The road, it goes north

I got a destiny card from the Drownies.

...

The Broker seems almost reasonable, now.

What characters have you taken a liking [/spoiler] or lusting [/spoiler] to?

Bump

Keep this alive, okay?

THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN

The Tireless Mechanic is mai husbando. The Irrepressible Canoneer is amazing, and became just slightly moreso when a careless pronoun ID'd her as female.
Also, the Dark-Spectacled Admiral is character of the year, every year, for being a patriot and idealist despite the shithole setting.

I love the setting. I only wish Fallen London didn't have a paywall, or I wish you could grind Fallen London time in Sunless Sea. While I could get very heavily into Sunless Sea I struggled with Fallen London from the limitations of the paywall. I also didn't love it enough to spend more than a month's subscription.

I've been thinking about running a game, but I feel like I don't know London well enough to run a game set in it, and a game set as zailors would become difficult, I bet, or just a carbon copy of Sunless Sea which obviously I don't want.
I also want to preserve the wonder and strangeness of the setting without tying myself too closely to already written words. It's something I'll probably keep thinking on. I generally don't like running games in too original a setting because there's just too much conceptual and worldbuilding nonsense to make the game and place real to the players. One day I might do it, if I can write a concise enough introduction to the world, and enough descriptive notes kept to keep myself from running out of steam until I can go my own pace.

if you're desperate for money you can cheese sunlight filled mirrorcatch boxes to make some risky cash if you're still good with the Bruiser

[s

As do I. There's nothing like a little change to spice things up, and with the Revelation, everything will change.

... for the better?

You will change beyond all understanding, but something of you will remain.

So who's hyped for the Zubmariner expansion?

bump

Can't wait to pester those flukes it their own domain, personally.

What would copulation with a Fingerking be like? How's that sweet cloaca feel?

Bump.

So I played fallen london for a little bit (opened the site twice total but played quite a while on both occasions), liked it at first but then it started to feel like it didn't have that much to offer after all. Is it worth playing regardless? Should I buy sunless sea?

Fallen London starts off very slow, but gets pretty good (if you're okay with an ungodly amount of grinding for items in the later game).
Sunless Sea is better (in my opinion), but is also incredibly grindy. At least you have something to do in between the grinding (unlike Fallen London).

You play these games for the narrative, not for any particularly rewarding gameplay.

I forgot to mention that Fallen London has a lot of its best content behind a massive paywall.

Sunless Sea does not have that issue (though you have to pay to get in, of course).

Or, (in Sunless Sea anyway), you can cheat. If you only care about the story anyway...

Would anyone playing Fallen London be willing to work together? Some events require two players and I have no friends who play.

Bump

BrutusAurelius is my screen name friendo

What if Mt. Nomad is a adolescent mountain?

Thank you, friend.

It would probably take geological ages for it to grow to adulthood.

Ayille, if you're still looking for others.

Imagine if the Dawn Machine and Mt. Nomad did some amalgamy

About 5-6 years ago, when I was really hooked on Fallen London, I ran a one-shot adventure in it, with only two players. I made heavy use of the multiple different currencies and how different people and organizations valued them differently. I also made use of the incantation system from Unearthed Arcana (which was probably nicked from some other RPG I didn't know of). They were running a sort of detective agency, on the trail of a famous Irish singer, who and come to London, and whose voice was said to be so entrancing, that nobles were paying huge sums and priceless heirlooms and artifacts for the chance for a private performance.

Meanwhile, the singer was under constant threats from curious strangers, and the players weren't sure until the very end if they were going to help or hinder the Irish singer.

A video that I based the singer on.youtube.com/watch?v=1oxSeTZkJsI

What happens if you do something unwise on the lifeberg in the new story?

What stories do you want to see a continuation of?

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