I replied to the letter, but no reaction

[Stefan]

In the beginning of the game, I received a letter, to which I replied a bit late, because I also received a notice that the sender was expecting a reply. I went to the post office, bought a stamp, sent the letter, and received the change back. It's been weeks since I replied but nothing happened. What's wrong? I still had the notice that I should reply to them, but I burned it.

Now I'm kind of stuck in the game, I'm waiting for a reply, but for how long, and what if something went wrong and the reply was never registered, despite the stamp and all? Will they send a new letter?

[Maina]

I do not believe you get a response. You will start getting visitors each season and a yearly stipend in Spring.

[vindicar]

How do you reply to the letter?

[ForestMagi]

Originally posted by vindicar:

How do you reply to the letter?

You'll need to open up enough of the House to get access to a desk and some Ink; you insert the letter (or one of the reminders), the Ink, and a Soul card (there are different tones to the reply depending on which one you use, even!), and it'll change to a recipe called something like "Write a Reply to the Trust".

You'll get an item at the end, which you take to the Post Office (where you collected the original letter), pay the postage, and that's it. You'll start getting Visitors for Incidents, and if you have House of Light, at the end of the first Spring following your reply, you'll get your Writing Case.

[Stefan]

So it's autumn and I still haven't received any visitors, it's been weeks since I replied to the letter. What to do?

[ForestMagi]

Each season (except Numa) is only 6 in-game days long, so I'm not 100% sure what you mean by weeks, but...

You only get one Visitor per Season, so if you didn't send it until after Autumn started, you should get your first in Winter; if you sent it in Summer, you should have gotten your first one at the start of Autumn.

If you want to test whether the reply registered correctly, make a manual save, fast forward through until the first day of Spring, and see if you get your yearly stipend (it will pop up on the right side with I believe a lightbulb icon, and will contain a One Pound Note and a Bronze Spintria).

If you do, you should be good to go, and can reload the manual save and use those days to make progress; if not, submit a bug report with the manual save file, and see if the devs know of a way to fix it.

I haven't heard of the game not registering the reply properly before, but in the worst case scenario, you may have to start a new run; Book of Hours is a game where prior knowledge really speeds things along, though, so if you do have to restart, it probably won't take as long to get back to where you are as it took to get there the first time (in both real-world and in-game time).

[Stefan]

I did what you suggested, ForestMagi, and I received my stipend in the spring. In the winter, I didn't see any visitors, but I did get a visitor in Numa. Anyhow, I'll continue playing and try to make sense of this game.

[ForestMagi]

The lack of normal visitors is confusing, but receiving the stipend means you definitely sent the reply. If you haven't gotten a visitor for Spring and don't get one for Summer, then something definitely went wrong somewhere, and you should submit a bug report regardless. Oriflamme's Auction House should also be offering a book once per Season, so that's another thing to keep an eye on.