Newbie Guide: Strategy tips and tidbits

[shawnreed343]

Before leaving London:
1. Always read the newspaper in your quarters. This will give you current news, and may give you one supply.
2. Visit the Admiralty Office and see if there's anything in particular they need. When you visit that port and return, you'll get 150 echo for the strategic information. You'll also get paid for each port report.
3. Use your beginning echo to buy extra crew once, and the rest on fuel and supply with a leaning towards fuel.
4. Offer to ship coffins to Venderbight. It's good beginning income- you'll get 45 echo for it at Venderbight.
5. The man of business is good. Shady jobs... but profitable. It's worth it, even if it smacks of being extorted by the mafia.
6. DO NOT push the full power! button! You will blow up your engine. (seriously) Do so only for a very short time if you need to outrun a monster (and don't if you can naturally outrun it).

Early voyage tips:
1. It's generally best to head north towards Venderbight first. The fights here are beneficial to you.
2. If you run into a bat swarm, fight it. My strategy, though it takes a little grinding time, is flare, flare, evade, observe, observe, observe, observe, observe, evade, volley, volley. This is a guaranteed win without damage 95% of the time and you'll get 5 fragments, and if you collect the bat corpses, 1 supply. It isn't necessary, though, if you don't want the fragments. If you want, you can simply flare, flare, volley, volley for a faster fight.
3. If you run into a pirate ship, fight it- when you win, gut it rather than send it to port, because you can occasionally find loot worth 60 echoes, without a risk of losing crewmembers. The other option is to try to send it home with a skeleton crew. You'll temporarily lose 2 crew members (3 permanently if you fail, which will cost at least 30 to buy back), but you'll gain 50 echo when you return to Fallen London and the crew members back.
4. Stop by Hunter's Lodge, and spy on them first. You gain 40 echo if you succeed, and then present yourself to the house. Trade a news if you have to. The most beneficial sister to dine with is Phoebe, she will reduce your terror level by 5, and give you a tale of far off shores, worth 12 echo in Venderbight, or 10 echo and antiquarian XP at the academy in Fallen London, but this costs 1 secret to unlock (worth it). The oldest gives you 1 terror and a tale of terror, which can sometimes be useful later on.
5. Hug shorelines and light boueyes. This prevents your terror from rising. If in doubt, hover your mouse over the terror bar to see if your terror is increasing or not. In some places, you may end up memorizing shortcuts through dark areas.
6. Don't forget to make a port-report at every place you stop, you get paid for these in Fallen London when you return.
7. After you drop off the coffins in Vandenbight, continue north to Whither, and from there travel almost straight East. At this point, run from all enemies.
8. At Mount Palmerston (east past the Citadel of Lights) be sure to stock up on fuel, It's cheaper here than anywhere else at only 9 echo.
9. Head South from Mount Palmerston to Port Cecil in the coral islands. Collect scintillac here - ie collect coral. It's worth 70 echo in Fallen London. Also, if you do well at chess, your pages will increase (how fast you convert fragments to secrets).
10. You can either head west to Demeaux, or south to Gaiden Mourn. Gaiden Mourn is a dangerous place, but can be very profitable. Demeaux is not as dangerous, but gathering supplies there is probably too much of a risk if you aren't close to starving, it can increase your terror by 5 each time if you are not lucky.
11. There are some other ports you can stop by on your way back to Fallen London, but at this point you should start returning, hugging shorelines and boueys as much as possible. Any time you return to Fallen London, your terror level sets to 50 if it is above that.

More advanced tips:
1. Recruit an officer each time you return to Fallen London. It is the most surefire way to increase your stats at present, even without trading secrets to them. They give you a passive bonus when equipped.
2. There are three ways to -drastically- reduce your terror, from 50 to 0, as far as I've found. One is random- the tattoo guy in London. If you refuse to get a tattoo, your terror is reduced to 0. Another is to desecrate the church in Wither, but this has some side effects. The third is to travel to the surface through the Cumaean Canal. And, regarding this...
3. If you decide to travel to the surface through the Cumaean Canal, you will need a LOT of fuel. I strongly suggest a full cargo hold of about 33 fuel and 7 supply, and a full crew is mandatory.
4. Everything you do on the surface decreases your terror. You can drop it to 0 in one trip, but you'll lose most of your crew. The longer you stay up there, the more of your crew die. I don't know why... the sun apparently kills neathers. Sunstroke, maybe? In any case, you can ferry goods on the surface- it will cost you 10 fuel (probably 1 crewmember). If you're lucky, you get 300 echo. If unlucky, 100 echo. You can buy fuel and supply on the surface for 15 each. Don't push your luck. You'll probably need to spend some of your money for fuel- you'll need 10 fuel to return below. You'll also have a tale from the surface as a curiosity. Going to the surface is only recommended if your terror is very high (50+).
5. Events at each destination seem to be broken into 'common, uncommon, rare' sets. Though I cannot fully confirm this, there seems to be a percentage scale for which event happens. However, some you can depend on every time, though the results may vary.
6. When you die... and you will, if you are unfamiliar with the map, the chart is probably your best bet as a hand-me-down. If you've been on a few voyages and filled most of your officer slots, your officers. And if you've really spent a lot of secrets on upgrading a stat, well, the stat. (10 or more traded secrets to be better than most officers)
7. If you do get sucked into fighting something you can't beat, sometimes you can still get away by repeatedly pressing the retreat choice until you have enough distance that you can disengage.
8. When you accumulate nightmares, rest in your home in London to get good night's rest. This counters out a nightmare (for the most part).
9. If you want to upgrade your ship, weapons aren't very necessary if you run away from everything you can. I recommend an engine upgrade first. This will allow you to travel faster, improving your route-time overall (though not by much). On the other hand, if you do plan to fight monsters or tougher ships, a harpoon gun comes recommended, as it deals damage directly to an opposing ship's crew, and works well against a number of monsters, especially bound sharks.
10. Straight from a developer: Returning to a port events (being able to do certain events again) only reset after you've spent enough time at zee, and a logbook message will appear to let you know this has happened. (though I'm not certain which one)
11. Your speed will drop in half when you have under 5 crewmembers. You won't be able to put your engine into 2nd gear.
12. Don't be discouraged if you fail multiple times, even with this guide. It's a challenging game requiring good resource management and a mind for odds (by the way, you can check the percent chance to succeed at any given challenge). Hopefully you're enjoying the game.
13. Mostly, have fun! New content will be released that may change everything I've said here (hopefully not all of it, but some of it, quite likely). Don't be afraid to strike out exploring only to die, just to fill in more map (especially in your mind).
14. If anyone wants to come up with an 'event guide' for each destination, and the random events, that would be awesome. Basically, just where, what skill check is used if any, and what you gain or lose. Thank you.

[Flinky]

Thanks for this. I'd gathered a lot of the same things you mentioned at the start, but had no idea about some of the other things you wrote. So thanks. Must have taken some time to put it all into writing. I know a lot of people out there will appreciate this so thanks :-)

[shawnreed343]

You're very welcome. I'm glad that I could help. I'll gladly add to the tips if anyone shares more (after confirming them)- I'm still discovering things myself and the unfinished parts of the map are still a bit mysterious.

[Tomn]

This is a very good guide and I agree with most of it - but I do have a few points of disagreement, mostly to do with combat.

1) I don't think it's worthwhile grinding observation on bats for five fragments a pop when you get 50 fragments just from finding a new rock in the middle of nowhere. Combat takes a hellaciously long time, and five fragments just isn't worth it. Just kill them for the supplies, or toss them overboard for the terror reduction - that's far more useful most of the time.

2) Never send ships back to port as prizes - always take the loot instead. If your prize goes missing, you lose a significant percentage of your starting crew, and if you drop below five crewmen your speed is halved until you can recruit back up to par. Further, it costs like thirty echoes to restock on crewmen, taking much of the profit out of prize-taking. Loot isn't just less risky, it's also just as profitable - sometimes you get booby prizes like supplies, but other times you get valuable silks and jewels worth 60 or so echoes. Thus, take the loot, damn the prizes.

3) I agree that engines should be your top priority, but a gun with the harpoon quality should also be high on your priority list - they are amazing. Not only do they do much-increased damage against monster-type enemies, they can directly target the crew of enemy ships, which is often smaller and less defended than their hull. The undermanned pirate pinnance, for example, can be knocked out with nothing more complex than two flares and a single flensing attack - pretty good work considering the rewards.

4) As an aside, once you have a harpoon gun you should engage and kill any bound sharks you come across - doing so takes only two shots with flensing salvoes, and grants you a hunting trophy that you can turn in to the Sister's Abbey for a large terror reduction. Time your trips to the Abbey well, and remember that London automatically sets terror to 50 if it's above that.

5) While selling tales to Venderbight can be profitable, consider selling them to the university in London instead - the difference in profit is small (10 echoes instead of 12), and it increases your antiquarian quality. Granted, I have no idea what that does for now, if anything, but if Fallen London was any indication it is likely that it will set you up for bigger and better things in the future.

Don't take all this stuff the wrong way - as I said, it is excellent and I follow most of it myself. There's just a few small points to flesh out, is all.

[shawnreed343]

So noted regarding engines- though the officer I recruited that improved engine speed did indeed seem to help, so I took the liberty of assumption. I'll edit that in, and the choice of whether you want to take the time to farm fragments from bats or not. I will also add the note about your speed dropping in half when you have under 5 crew. I noticed something like that, but thought it was from a full cargo hold. That will be a helpful tip. Same goes for the harpoon tips- though I think that comes down to playstyle, as it never really did much other than sit around for me.

[Tomn]

Originally posted by faijeya:

I disagree about engines.
Initial ones are ok to run from any monster or pirate.
More powerful engines (I started a test game and cheated echos) did not add much to speed in my experience, but added to fuel consumption.

You sure about that? I was under the impression that better engines helped with fuel consumption because you went faster and got further for the same amount of coal, but I'll admit I wasn't paying close scientific attention. What was the nature of your test? Did you run a few experiment runs with different engine types past certain set points and timed the lot, or something?

[shawnreed343]

Tomn, agreed. They do eat through fuel faster, but you also travel faster. So the distance-to-fuel-consumed ratio -probably- stays even, just in a faster timeframe. I need proper testing for the engines, but there are two engineer officers that improve the two factors- one improves fuel longevity by 5%, the other increases engine output by 100. Which is probably algorythmically figured in with the weight of your ship and crew size to determine your speed.

[shawnreed343]

Also, thank you very much on the tip regarding gutting pirate ships. All I had ever gotten the few times I gutted them was supply. *shakes head sadly* Glad there are better possible rewards. Probably a rare chance of something really special, too.

[shawnreed343]

Guide has been updated, and will gladly fill in more as more data comes in.

[Τyrian]

Thanks for the tips i'll give these a try, so far i just keep dying within the first 15 minutes, the game is pretty hard and unforgiving imo :/

[Kristoffer]

Game is hard!

I've finally accumulated enough money to buy the house at 1000 and the will at 200. Now I've managed to gather up around 800 echoes or so, should I go for the gun or engine then?

[Masterhummel]

I'm not sure about the bats but i kill them with 0 damage in all cases with simply flare flare flare volley volley

[Tomn]

Yeah, I think generally in combat excessive evasion is an easy newbie trap. It's tempting to want to try and keep illumination low so that you can attack with impunity, but against perceptive enemies this might simply put you on an endless treadmill of slowly pushing illumination back and forth and mostly up, while against weak enemies you'll probably be wasting much time that can be saved by simply blasting a fool. In both cases it can (sometimes) be better to simply damn the torpedoes and fire all guns quick as you can - against the weak you can kill them before they can respond, and against the strong they'll always get to a point where they shoot you anyways, so you may as well try to kill them quickly enough to minimize the damage.

[Tomn]

This is pretty interesting. It looks like there's no point upgrading engines at all for the default ship, then, unless your impatience outweighs your greed.

I would suspect, then, that the real point of better engines comes into play with the heavier ships - I had wondered what "ship weight" really did, and it is likely that the "greater speed" of the more advanced engines really serves to offset the drag created by the weight, which would make sense. This would mean that the truly heavy ships would be nigh useless on anything but excellent engines, though.

If you're still cheating through the game, as a quick check, could you try buying the absolute heaviest ship in the game and comparing its performance with the starter engine vs the most advanced one? Not scientifically, just a quick "Let's see what that does" run.

[Kristoffer]

Wow...so we should never buy new engines?

[Tomn]

Originally posted by Kristoffer:

Wow...so we should never buy new engines?

Well, thinking about it, there is ONE reason beyond bigger ships - if you really, really need/want to improve your Veils rating for better combat. If for whatever reason you've ended up deciding that combat is more important and more profitable to you than long-range trade and exploration, swap in for a pricier engine and run circles around your opponent. Bit marginal, though.