Another Echo Bazaar Status Update

Only interesting updates (well, hopefully interesting> shall be shown here.

Spoilers follow.

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Current Description

ArachneJericho, a sagacious and compelling individual of mysterious and indistinct gender

Stats

Dangerous: 23 (up 2 levels)
Watchful: 90 (still maxed)
Persuasive: 78 (up 31 levels)
Shadowy: 26 (up 3 levels)

Now, Persuasive is really only that high because of (a) 90-point Fate bonus given to all players as consolation for the server rollback, and (b) I decided, after talking to the folks at Fail Better Games about the particular points of the server rollback fail, to give them more money and got a ton more Fate.

One of the best features of Echo Bazaar is that you don’t have to buy Fate—it’s just acceleration, apart from paying 25 Fate to get involved in the Soul Trade storyline (which, well, now everyone has the opportunity to :)). The game isn’t a race, and if you can and feel like donating to the creators, you really do get something back other than a warm glowing feeling—without unbalancing the game for everybody else.

Win all around.

Current Level of Heart’s Desire Ambition

Last time we talked, I had collected all 77 First City Coins, started investigating the history of the Topsy King, and then ran into a stumbling block in the midst of trying to find the woman who contacted me early on in the ambition, and who I never could find. This was a nice tieback to the ambition in its early beginnings, and I quite liked that aspect.

Now: finding the woman is not easy. There are four possible options to take at this point, and some are more demanding than others. A lot more, in some cases:

Option 1

Going back to the address you got at the very beginning of the ambition. If you remember, there was a time you were given that book on the maladies of goats (!), and it contained an address in the Forgotten Quarter. You also received a message telling you to meet someone there. But once you gained access to the Forgotten Quarter (either through the Scrawling on the Walls storylet in your Lodgings, or through gaining access via buying a London Street Sign), for me at least, she was long gone. Perhaps you were more fortunate and found her, but I didn’t….

Anyways, as I didn’t find her before, I still don’t find her here. This storylet will boost Watchful, but for me did nothing else, multiple times over. Possibly it’s a matter of luck, but the option doesn’t say so. Hm.

Option 2

Talk some sense into the Topsy King. Requires high Persuasive—very high, although not as high as the fourth option. And of course, this works about as well as you expect.

If you fail here, you lose your book on the maladies of goats.

If you succeed here, you lose your book on the maladies of goats. Except with different event text. Or possibly this is a matter of luck, but the option doesn’t say so.

Fortunately, if you do lose your book, another option appears that will allow you to buy the book again. It’s not horribly expensive, but it is annoying. (200 Whispered Secrets.)

Option 3

Investigate the book for clues with very high Watchful and the Patent Scrutenizer Deluxe!. The Deluxe version costs 400 echoes, and without it, you can’t unlock this option at all.

Personally I’m still saving up for it, however I decided to do so while doing everything possible to boost Persuasive, because…

Option 4

Talk to the devious bookseller. Requires very high Persuasive to have a reasonable chance at success—over 85 perhaps, even though it unlocks at 80—and 400 Cryptic Secrets, which shouldn’t be a problem to collect if you’ve gotten this far.

This option is the one I could both unlock and succeed at and get farther on…

What happens next?

You get another address, this time in Wolfstack Docks, you know, the place where if you’re an arachnophobe like me ((Yes, I know, the irony.)) it’s AAARRRRGGHHHH.

If you have extremely high Watchful (I have to put my Exceptional Hat on and get out the Patent Scrutinzer as well as the Cardsharp Monkey), you now have a storylet that will grind out 45 cryptic secrets and boost your connection to the Constables each time.

The trail’s ended here for now until they release Book 2, Part 2. It’s still satisfying to reach this point, though.

Of course, now your life in Fallen London is temporarily structureless. I personally would start to save up on everything possible so you can buy whatever is needed to get through the next levels of the Ambition, because it’s not going to get easier. If anything, it’s probably going to get harder, and make you miss the days when all you had to do was collect @#$# 77 First City Coins.

New Stuff

  • Irresistible Drum: Persuasive +3, Shadowy -1, Watchful -1. Very, very useful and relatively cheap for the Persuasive bonus.
  • Masterwork Dancing Slippers. Because I am a dancing queen.
  • Winsome Dispossessed Orphan. Awww. Poor little urchin.
  • I bought another Dazed Raven Advisor, but I haven’t see the card he unlocks yet. :(

Ambition Stats

  • Ambition: Heart’s Desire! is overall at 12
  • Scrawled Notes on the Wall: 1
  • Bishop of St. Fiacre’s 4
  • Topsy King 10

Significant Contacts

  • Bohemian: 16 (burned to get Prisoner’s Honey in the Shuttered Palace)
  • The Great Game: 20
  • The Constables: 23 (at one point it was 35; burned to get Surface Currency at the Shuttered Palace)
  • The Church: 25 (amazingly stable, but I don’t yet need that many candles)
  • Criminals: 3 (so that I can access another option in the chess dream)
  • Hell: 6 (only options are burning for Watchful, which can’t increase for me at the moment, or burning for Shadowy, which requires one soul, a cost I am NOT WILLING TO PAY!)
  • Revolutionaries: 11 (burn for Dangerous!)
  • Society: 30 (also very stable, and I burn it often for wine)
  • Docks: 7 (so many weasel tournaments!)
  • Orient: 7 (burn for Shadowy, one day)
  • Duchess: 15 (supposedly useful for busting out of exile in the Tomb Colonies)

Menaces I Usually Have All the Time Now

  • Suspicion: due to one of the ways I pare down nightmares
  • Nightmares: because I explore nightmares
  • Scandal: I take big risks in the Shuttered Palace at times because JADE
  • Inciting a Simian Revenge?: still at 1. How do I make my monkey happy again? Is there a bananas storylet somewhere? Hmmm.

Routes

  • Forgotten Quarter (bought via London Street Sign)
  • The Flit Heart’s Desire Ambition
  • Shuttered Palace (lots of wine)
  • Wolfstack Docks (glim and surface currency; by this time I had enough echoes such that I simply bought my way in).

Nightmares

  • Is Someone There?: 8 (not yet high enough for Memories of Light)
  • Death by Water: 3
  • Burial of the Dead: 4
  • Fire Sermon: 3
  • A Game of Chess: 8 (This is a really interesting dream sequence, with fewer autofire cards and more choices.)

Particular nightmare storylines don’t seem to get interesting until at least level 5.

Nowadays I use my growing skills as a painter in the Shuttered Palace to lower my nightmares.

New Story Stuff

  • cultivating an acquaintance with His Amused Lordship 1

Minor Attributes

Subtle 12
Heartless 2
Hedonist 8
Magnanimous 16
Melancholy 4
Steadfast 3
Daring 4
Forceful 3

Exploiting Special Areas

The Forgotten Quarter: great for secrets and connections that fuel the Shuttered Palace and, likely, Wolfstack Docks.

The Shuttered Palace: reduce scandal (usually due to the Shuttered Palace), nightmares and suspicions (both due to exploring nightmares, absolving nightmares, and just being in the Forgotten Quarter). Nice place to get many goods (jade at the upper levels, but also moon pearls, wine, scraps of silk, and amber).

Plans

  1. I guess no time like the present to save up for an Overgoat.
  2. I no longer want rooms at the Bethlehem. I want rooms at the Bazaar! And also it’s a little more achievable for me, although that’s still an absolutely insane number of Whispered Secrets.
  3. Wait for Heart’s Desire ambition to pick up again.
  4. Keep advancing all Nightmare storylines.
  5. Continue shepherding souls.
  6. Die for a while and explore the boat.
  7. Get exiled for a while and explore the tomb colonies.
  8. Increase Shadowy to see if more stuff unlocks in the Shepherd of Souls storyline

5 thoughts on “Another Echo Bazaar Status Update”

  1. My “inciting a simian revenge” is at 3. It’s not going higher at the moment because I stopped pursuing Heart’s Desire to grind out echoes for some Knife and Candle items I want. But if anything interesting happens with it, I’ll let you know.

    The dream sequence I’m pursuing at the moment is Chess, but I lost a lot of status in the rollback and the cards haven’t seemed to come as frequently since, so I haven’t caught up to where I was before. I think I’m chasing 6 with it. The autofire cards are just starting to be replaced with choice cards again, which is where it got interesting before.

  2. I kind of picked Heart’s Desire without really exploring my options, but with the Fate bonus I switched to the Light Fingers ambition with little regret. I really wanted shadowy and persuasive to be my main stats.

    That said: I’m glad you’re doing this so I can peek at what I’m missing.

    And I kind of like the Tomb Colonies, to the point where I prefer them over madness… Although I can’t seem to avoid going insane for the life of me.

  3. C.C. Finlay,

    Thanks! I’ll be very curious to see what happens.

    The Chess dream is definitely more interesting past level 7.

    Javier,

    You’re welcome. :)

    Insanity is more easily combatted at higher levels of any particular attribute. Below 60 you’re still at the whim of nightmares, somewhat.

  4. Hey man!

    “One of the best features of Echo Bazaar is that you don’t have to buy Fate—it’s just acceleration, apart from paying 25 Fate to get involved in the Soul Trade storyline (which, well, now everyone has the opportunity to :))”

    How can I get involved in the Soul Trade storyline without spending fate?

    Regards,
    Nero

    • Nero,

      That was a one-time occurrence, when EchoBazaar temporarily lost some data and had to restore from backup; extra Fate was handed out to make up (a bit) for some of the loss.

      So no, you can’t get involved in the Soul Trade without Fate.

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