@danderson I felt dying and restarting was really frustrating because the initial bit wasn't fun to go through again. But getting rid of fear was a pain even after docking in Fallen London. Was I just bad at it or missing something?
Loved the story telling and atmosphere though. And going exploring in my little ship.
Mild spoilers for Sunless Sea?@walnut A couple things that worked for me:
Work up to buying a home and making an ironclad will as fast as possible. That really takes the sting out of dying by letting you carry over some skill points/money/equipment. Even better, get a child and feed them Zee stories, so that they go to sea and become your scion. Then you can pass two legacies to your next captain.
I just lost a ship in this run, and retained 100% of my money and 50% of the two skills I was buffing, which really takes the sting off the early game. I almost have enough to go straight back to a nice ship and good equipment.
Similarly for lowering terror, the townhouse + child is a big help for that, I think it knocks off 10-20 terror per return to London. Then I also make note of good places to reduce terror at zee: tea with the factor at Demeaux island, tea with the squatters at Frostfound are two that I use a fair bit. If my terror's a little high, I'll do a couple shorter round-trips to London to get more rest cycles in (you have to be away long enough for the story lamp to light, but that's only a couple minutes at zee, so maybe a round-trip to Codex along the coast for port reports or something like that).
But at least in this run, terror's just not been much of a worry. I'm routinely at <20 terror with the above, and when a questline took me up to 60 or so, it was back to zero within a couple returns to London - I just stick to explored areas and known trade routes while I'm dropping terror.
Oh and for survivability, upgrading to a good deck gun helped a ton for me in terms of making fights more survivable. I still run away from most things that are >100 health until I get a boat with more hull though.
But also yeah, dying is still a bit of a drag. The above reduces the frequency enough for me that it's an okay change of pace rather than being a frustration. I get to explore a new map! :)
