KickStarter Sunless Sea - an undersea trading and exploration game

[Damned Registrations]

Been playing this a lot. Enjoying it quite a bit. Pacing is certainly slow (especially with permadeath factored in, the amount your next character inherits is really quite small compared to the effort required to set it up and how easily you can die from bad luck) but I think the game would be pretty dull if I could just run around roflstomping through all the challenges. The interesting part is managing to sail to the other side of the map in your shitty ass starting boat, with your hold filled with stupid coffin men, and then trying to intelligently handle various locations and manage your money/cargo to be able to get back home.

It also feels pretty awesome to discover stuff on your own. My biggest gripe would actually have to be that the game itself spoils a lot of the fun by giving you too much information about what you need to resolve a quest/text adventure.

Never could get into Space Rangers. Progression felt just as slow as this, but there were only a handful of text adventures, which were the only real fun parts, since you're basically a gnat in the middle of important battles, and trading and bounty hunting were both very dull affairs.

 

[Trash]

Where do I get the coffin people these days? Guys where a nice Fallen London commodity back in the day, but apparantly they simply aren't for sale there in the release version. Made for a simple milk run.

 

[phtmyr]

Fuck this game. This is so tedious and boring. This game feels like it's designed for tablets to sell "Fast Travel" and "Something Awaits You" tokens for $0.49.

I hoped for a release like this for a long time but this one turned out to be a huge disappointment.

For me to even consider taking it up again it needs the following:
...

This game needs random encounters at sea more than anything:

• Shipwrecks to investigate
• Shipwreck survivors to rescue
• Floating junk
• Floating loot
• Neutral creatures to interact with
• Messages in bottles
• Whirlpools for fast travel...

Spoiler

 

[Ulminati]

Well, there are whirlpools. But I never sailed into one.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I dunno how you guys are finding a lack of stuff to do. There are like 10 crewmembers with quests that seem fairly involved, and the guy in Vinderblight has a gigantic quest I'm not even close to solving. There's also the whole Diplomat thing and setting up spy networks/influencing the balance of power. Are you guys all done with that shit, never noticed it, or just don't care? Not to mention a shitload of other stuff I've yet to fully explore (like pretty much ever major port on the map.)

I get the feeling that the only thing you guys do is shop sphinxstone to london or something.

 

[phtmyr]

I dunno how you guys are finding a lack of stuff to do.

Speaking for myself, I don't have any problems with the amount of content. But I simply can't handle the amount of dull sailing. Combat is boring and there are only a handful of enemies worth engaging. And there aren't any random encounters besides terror triggered crew casualties.

Just when some area or quest line is getting interesting, progress demands that you have 3 Devilbone Dice or 5 Drowning-Pearls or some amount of random trinket. And that means more sailing. I can see how these requirements could be beneficial to the overall game experience but it just doesn't work since the sailing is boring.

Well, there are whirlpools. But I never sailed into one.

I ran into all of them with hopes of anything interesting happenning, but no luck so far.

 

[yes plz]

While it technically does have a good amount of content I don't think it has a lot of quality content right now. So far most of the quests seem to be: sail to port A for a text blurb > sail to port B for a text blurb > sail back to port A for a text blurb, or sail to port A for a text blurb > find specific items > sail back to point A for a text blurb. Which wouldn't really be bad if their stories were interesting or you got decent rewards but from what I've seen, you don't. Like the one with the sisters on Hunter's Island (or whatever it's called); you talk to the sisters a few times, explore the island a bit, and eventually one of the sisters burns the mansion down. If you pass a stat check you can save one and thus get a 'Charred Sister' as a crew member but she isn't that great, has next to nothing to say, and all you can apparently do with her is drop her off at a few select points. Then there's that Deviless one that Angthoron already talked about.

There are, of course, a few that break from that mold. I can't remember the island's name but on it there was a faction of rat people fighting against a faction of guinea pig people. You had to choose which one to support (with the game mocking you if you tried the Biowarian 'c'mon guiz lets all be friendz!' option) with you then having to pick from various options to help your side and pass stat checks to successfully do the option. It was more engaging than most of the rest of the quests I've done but, again, neither the reward or story for it was that great. These types of quests seem few and far between.

For rewards one of the ways I think they could make them more interesting is by having it so that officers only join after you've completed a quest, and another way is perhaps make ship customization more in depth and have it so that you only get decent parts via quest rewards.

Still, I like the game and find myself getting drawn back to play it, mostly for the exploration and atmosphere, even if I can't play it for more than a hour due to the plodding pace of sailing. Which they could remedy at least somewhat by adding in a lot more 'at zee' random events/encounters that fire off at a more regular interval. Right now I can sail for an entire hour with high terror and not have a single random event trigger.

I think after a year or two of content development (and speaking of that, they shouldn't include content that isn't complete -- being told "This will unlock on Feb. 28" is stupid and takes me right out of the game) and tweaks this game will probably be great but as it is I don't think it's worth full price as it feels more like a time sink you'd play on the bus rather than a full game.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I think you need to look at things from a larger perspective. Obviously sailing around trying to complete one quest is going to be dull. But if you're doing like 10 quests at a time (which is easy, since the vast majority require a trivial amount of cargo space) then you're never more than a minute away from the next leg of some quest.

Also, if you want involved quests, try finding the parts of the Neathbow or making the Impeller (which, as it happens, overlap in exactly the way I was talking about.)

Also, plenty of places besides london can get you supplies or fuel. The places related to hell tend to sell fuel even cheaper than london actually, Khan's Shadow is a decent place for supplies in the far east (considering that area is supposed to be difficult) Demeaux Island and the Mangroves are good sources of supplies too. Not to mention Pigmote Isle. And even the places where it's 'expensive' are usually just an extra 10 echos on each. If you're running with a crew of ~8 and don't leave your light on all the time wasting fuel, you can generally turn a profit even if you're spending ~600 echoes on supplies to move around the far east, exploring and finishing off quests.

Reports are a terrible source of income. Probably is easiest early bit you can do repeatedly if you feel the need to be boring is going to the Salt Lions, jumping off for an implication (get salt's favour first, the elder sister on hunter's island will give it to you) and bringing a load of stone back to london. Thats a profit of 550 echoes right there, and port reports along the way will probably cover fuel costs if you keep the light mostly off.

Other good sources of money include getting stuff for the merchant guy (generally pays 2 or 3 times the cost for only 7 items), giving intelligence to the diplomat (requires setting up a spy network, more of a long term thing suited for those specializing in veils) and smuggling stuff.

I think most people are just butthurt because the title of this thread is misleading and they were expecting to be able to play merchant and become super rich easily.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

But if you're doing like 10 quests at a time (which is easy, since the vast majority require a trivial amount of cargo space) then you're never more than a minute away from the next leg of some quest.

You've made the rookie mistake of thinking the quests in this game are entertaining.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Game just updated with new stories...

Doesnt need more words, needs better gameplay. But these guys being from Gaiders school of game development, i dont have much hope

 

[Damned Registrations]

But if you're doing like 10 quests at a time (which is easy, since the vast majority require a trivial amount of cargo space) then you're never more than a minute away from the next leg of some quest.

You've made the rookie mistake of thinking the quests in this game are entertaining.

Maybe if you actually did any of them. You played for 10 hours and didn't burn down hunter's keeo yet? WTF. What the hell have you been doing the whole time.

Anyways, I just found out on my latest run that you can steal the beacon/gem thing from Pigmote Isle, depending on how you handle things. Of course, now the isle itself is useless to me, but the item you get in return is pretty fucking awesome too (reusable activation that automatically readies all your guns instanty, 20 second cooldown.) Makes me wonder what other crazy shit is waiting to be found.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I'm kind of torn on it. Being decent at combat is really quite helpful for keeping supplies up in the early game, and I'd imagine in the long run, with a decent ship with more than 1 weapon and some actual hull and stats, could even be reliably profitable. But on the other hand, cranking up veils to just avoid all that shit seems very useful too, and in theory I'd like to try capturing a ship by killing the crew at some point, which seems impossible if you raise Iron much at all. I'm not even sure it's remotely feasible. And having the Cavies control the island for you is awesome, free 5 supplies and 25 terror reduction is a huge value.

Also, it has other uses, it's a really valuable gigantic hunk of coral after all. I'm keeping it right now to see if I can find any better use for it besides doing the curator quest.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Maybe if you actually did any of them. You played for 10 hours and didn't burn down hunter's keeo yet? WTF. What the hell have you been doing the whole time.

Hey. HEY! That's actually 7 hours. The 3 previous hours were from months ago in early access taking a look at it. And in that 7 hours I found out about stealing shit from Pigmote and led the guinea pigs to victory, sonny Jim.

That was probably the best quest of the bunch, but even that was nothing special. Was one or two skill checks and that's about it. A lot of the longer ones (Like Visage) are fairly railroady and have a lot of infinitely repeatable "You get +1 reputation" buttons. Maybe they're just supposed to be easy newbie quests to get starting goodies but it just added to my sense of everything being shit since they weren't particularly interesting gameplay-wise and I didn't really care for the writing or lore either.

I wondered about capturing ships, too. I know I did it in early access and it was more valuable than scuttling, but I haven't pulled it off once in release. I tried damaging an enemy ship and then ramming it thinking it was maybe Pirates-like in that would trigger boarding but nope. Either pirate ships had less crew in early access or they changed the rules for how you capture ships.

I dunno. Maybe I'll load it up again tonight and grit my teeth for some more. Hard to talk myself into it when there are so many better games but I do hate myself and masturbating while playing a bad game is good for the soul.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I actually thought the Pigmote quest was kinda dull, since theres no real consequences for failing the checks, and it's so damned short. I'm far more interested in stuff like when you take foxfire candles to go spelunking, or what the consequences are for screwing with the balance of power by giving intelligence to people or using spy networks.

Also, I'm starting to realize that a lot of the options to do things ARE hidden unless you have all the prerequisites met. So there's even more options for things than I initially thought, and more incentive to hang on to various types of valuables in case they unlock an option you wouldn't have even been aware of otherwise.

 

[Starwars]

I also think Pigmote is one of those areas where you have to wonder what the fuck is going with the writing. The entire style (and number of words) and setup is just wildly different from a lot of other stuff in the game. Pretty jarring.

 

[Angthoron]

Yeah, Pigmote... To be fair, it was right next to the Mailman island, so I wasn't quite as jarred by it, because I already had my jimmies rustled by that. We have people bashing Fallout 2 for being incoherent and themeparkey, well, compared to this, F2 is a paragon of consistency and unity. Holy shit. Even the cheesy puffs rat king. Even the talking plant.

Also, went with the Rats and somehow my quest was over in three clicks. I am not sure if I failed a stat check or what it was, I was too busy clicking "next".

Dunno. Some texts are good. Some are very passable. And some are terrible.

 

[ironyuri]

My map after 1 year at zee with a veteran soldier.

 

[yes plz]

How much of the map is supposed to be randomized? Because that looks a lot like mine.

 

[Starwars]

It's not a lot, it seems most places appear in roughly the same spots. Very minor differences. The coastlines are always the same. Guess it's sorta "tile-based" in a way and that certain islands can spawn in those various tiles, it's pretty limited I think. Biggest difference I see in that map from my current on is that I have Pigmote Island almost in the southern portion of the map. Salt Lions is closer to the northwestern part.

But yeah, you're not gonna see a huge difference.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Yeah, a bunch of locations aren't randomized, And of the ones that are, some don't range much Frostfound is always in the north, for example) but some of them move a lot. In my current game, the Fathomking's Hold is south of where Nuncio is on that map.

Been playing a bunch more. Managed to capture a ship (one of those cool golden ones at that); was incredibly disappointed. Not profitable at all, especially compared to just blowing up moustache sharks (or better yet trading/smuggling.)

I've also been screwing with all the factions and have had the oppurtunity for at least one of the special endings that gives all your following characters a stat boost. Held off though, since I'm more interested in finishing some of the officer quests, which are way way more difficult to do.

Also finished some of those quests, often, again, to great dissapointment. They really need to go over the cost:reward ratios on a lot of that shit. Sailing all over the place and forking over ~4k echoes worth of materials for a ~1-2k reward is really fucking lame.

OTOH, I totally recommend doing the Empire of Hands questline; was involved and rather entertaining. Easily the best one I've come across so far.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Been playing a bit more of this 'cause... Uh... I don't even know. Anyway, I wanted to ask about legacies since I'm still chugging along on my first dude. Got a kid in London I'm bumping up zee-fever on and I've picked up a stat-book for future captains, but eyeballing the wiki I'm not entirely sure how scion on the legacies work. If I have scion, does that mean my next captain (If I play a legacy captain which I would) would spend his "Two picks" on the stat book and ironclad will, or does the ironclad will and stat book show up no matter what, and scion means you get to pick two of the, uh, "Career" options, like starting with +50% of the previous captain's mirrors and money? And if that's the case, if you pick the two that give you half of the previous captain's money do you start with ALL his money?

Not dead yet but figured I should ask because when I do eventually die it'd be nice not to fuck up on legacies. I also get the feeling that dying is recommended even though it isn't happening to me, because getting previous captain's stat boosts would help for a lot of shit. Trying to level up via secrets is none too keen.
Also absolutely horrified at my win condition of zong of the zee.

 

[Damned Registrations]

On the Scion thing: it's the later, and yeah, you can start with all the money And you may as well, because unless you had a super valuable weapon, what else would be worthwhile? Keeping the chart just fucks you out of all the secrets you get from exploring the map.

And yeah, I'd give up on that win condition. There are others you can go for, even having selected that one. Try doing trades for the venture merchant guy in london, or the Empire of Hands quest.

I do not recommend doing what I did and getting to basically the end of all of them at the same time. Ugh, what a waste of effort.

 

[Norfleet]

This game seems to be an exercise in MMO-esque grinding. Most of the "Story" you cannot adequately partake in without lots and lots of stat grinding. The pay on everything tends to be pretty lousy, so you get to repeatedly grind stuff to get money to pay for it. As for dying being recommended, I would only really recommend dying as a strategy once: Start the game, buy the $200 cannon (second best deck gun in the shop, as far as I can tell) by trading in your ship for the shittiest thing in the dock, presumably the only reason it exists at all, then immediately die. Your next captain can choose to receive that gun, which will pretty much one-shot all the weak monsters you encounter. I am STILL using that gun. It's just that good. From that point, you GRIND, and you GRIND, and you GRIND. It's a lot like being in an MMO, only the trading mechanics suck so you're basically just doing admiralty patrols. The only real risk of death happens early on when you have no idea where you're going and can thus fail to find anything that generates enough money to pay for you sailing around. Once you have a few points down, admiralty patrols will cover your bills and it's just a matter of SLOOOWLY grinding cash. You can't really do most of the missions, since you would fail them, without lots and lots of stat grinding, and you don't know which ones which are safe to fail at, so you just...keep...grinding.

A significant portion of the equipment roster appears to be useless or even harmful. Take engines: I've tried the best engine for sale and the crappiest engine. You'd think slapping a 3500-power engine on a boat that was formerly propelled by an 800 would have dramatic effects, what with sticking an engine that has over 4x the thrust on it...nope, all it does is eat all your fuel instantly, the ship still moves at the same snailish pace as before. Similarly, guns: Everything more expensive either doesn't fit on the ship, or seems to be inferior to the $200 piece.

 

[Ramireza]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhIk2PqPU3o

Its not realy an RPG, but it has nice C&C´s, superb writing and a realy atmospheric gameworld.

Its maybe worth you try...

Here is a Review :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5QFl8xBiqY

 

[Gondolin]

There's already a thread on this game. Mods, please merge.

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...-trading-and-exploration-game-released.92676/