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 What is this game Sunless Skies is the sequel to Failbetter Games' slowboating underworld sailing game Sunless Sea. Set in a possible future of their Sunless Sea/Fallen London universe, London has escaped its imprisonment in a giant underground cavern by building a clockwork sun and then passing through a portal into space. You are a locomotive captain, flying a train through In essence the core gameplay loop of Sunless Skies is that you fly your train out into the great unknown, find some resources, maybe fight pirates or monsters, and hopefully find a story. Stories are the main rewards of this game, not as actual mechanical benefits, but in finding new places, sometimes you find interesting new text to read, whether that's from exploring the fungus-infested remains of an early exploratory locomotive, or assisting a failing circus in getting back on its feet. Meanwhile you can engage in a spot of trading to keep your operation solvent. What's different from Sunless Sea? The world is now made up of distinct zones. Seasoned players of Seas will of course be aware that the first game was sectioned into areas where the contents were jumbled up, but in this game the four areas are truly separated by the boundless reaches of space, and can only be accessed via transit relays. Think of the Cumaean Canal from the first game, only if using it moved you to a new map. The areas themselves are quite a bit larger than the areas from Seas. Making money is much easier. Unlike Sea where trading was a matter of running the Salt Lions and Viennese Coffee for seed money and then pulling up a wiki of the routes which were just barely profitable to run, trading is now a core part of the game, with the addition of Prospects and Bargains. A prospect informs you of a place which will buy a particular good at a premium, if you can source it, while bargains are found in outlying ports, people selling for less than the sale price of a good in the hub port, guaranteeing a profit if you sail the goods home. The world is less empty. The skies of the High Wilderness contain things like asteroids to mine, giant trees to hew for lumber, abandoned ruins to loot, which are separate from the normal ports, so even if you have a set destination in mind, there will be things to do along the way. It's possible this could be a downside if you liked the extremely sedate pace of Sunless Sea, but I think most will appreciate the change. The writing is different. Alexis Kennedy, the previous writer, has a new company now, working on Cultist Simulator and other things, and that shows in the writing. Not that the writing is bad, but it doesn't quite have the same magic. Sometimes it feels like the writers are trying to evoke the vague allusions that characterise Kennedy's writings, but leave the impression that even the writer doesn't know what's being alluded to. A slightly more optimistic tone also suffuses Sunless Skies, somewhat appropriate for the premise, but still a notable change from the other games. Also there's a lot fewer uses of the letter z now. I'm not sure how much people will actually mind these changes, but the last one might be a dealbreaker for some. Your captain levels differently. Now instead of gaining secrets to trade to your officers for skill points, you have a much slower growing XP bar, which then allows you to buy "reflections" on your past before you were a captain, which increase your stats. Also Pages has been merged into Mirrors. What's the same as Sunless Sea? Almost literally everything else, it is at its core an iteration on Sea, the combat's a bit better, the travel is a bit better, the trading is a lot better (as long as you wanted trading to be a bigger part of the game, anyway), but there's nothing truly revolutionary over what's come before. Gameplay The game is a top down sailing sim, mixed with short written vignettes. You have four resources to manage, your fuel, hunger, terror and hull. If you run out of fuel or hunger, you generally die. You buy supplies and fuel to keep these topped up as you travel. Your terror builds as you travel, especially if you are in proximity of the various cosmic horrors of space, and can be reduced by visiting ports among other methods. Let your terror get too high, and you or your crew might be driven mad by the opressive emptiness of the High Wilderness. There are also various monsters and pirates about who may be hostile, you have guns to fight them, and if your hull hits zero, that's it.  Interspersed with the sailing, are story vignettes. You get might get these on the move, in conversation with your crew, or on finding a new location, or visiting a port. Some of these include challenges for your captain to pass, based on their ability in the four skills, Iron, Mirrors, Hearts and Veils.  Along the way you'll meet new people, trade for a fortune, and maybe help some new friends or eat your own crew. The future's unpredictable out in the sky.
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Feb 3, 2019 18:00
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Can someone explain to me exactly how I get the attention of the Storm that Speaks? Or where to reliably find the Clay Conductor?
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Feb 3, 2019 18:16
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Crazy that this thread was made 20 minutes before I started looking for one. So far I'm loving this game. I played Sea alot, and this seems to be an improvement in every way. The combat especially is a million times better; positioning is actually a thing you can do!
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Feb 3, 2019 18:19
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Is the game as slow as Sunless Seas? Yes yes I know I know it builds atmosphere but as it's a game I like my games to be fun. No way I'm playing this unmodded if it is.
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Feb 3, 2019 19:04
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Duck and Cover posted:Is the game as slow as Sunless Seas? Yes yes I know I know it builds atmosphere but as it's a game I like my games to be fun. No way I'm playing this unmodded if it is. it is significantly faster, but still slow.
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Feb 3, 2019 19:06
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Duck and Cover posted:Is the game as slow as Sunless Seas? Yes yes I know I know it builds atmosphere but as it's a game I like my games to be fun. No way I'm playing this unmodded if it is. It is much faster, but still not "fast". The world is less empty space, and movement includes a nifty strafing dash which makes maneuvering and combat alot more interesting.
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Feb 3, 2019 19:09
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They also seem to have removed Engines as equipment and no full power option so you really only have the one speed for the whole game. I'm told certain locomotives are faster than others but I can't really tell.
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Feb 3, 2019 19:09
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Caidin posted:They also seem to have removed Engines as equipment and no full power option so you really only have the one speed for the whole game. I'm told certain locomotives are faster than others but I can't really tell. Every ship is the same speed. It's a balance choice to prevent the fastest ship automatically being considered the "best", and really it seems to work out just fine. You'll actually speed up your transit times as you get more comfortable with strafing and handling. Plus, travel isn't just endless expanses of black water now; there is a lot more poo poo outside of ports.
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Feb 3, 2019 19:12
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Locomotive topspeed is the same across all of them, even if acceleration might be different. Gotta say the writing is on point as always, but the early game is still the same tedious slog it was in seas. Even worse now, honestly, since now you've got even more poo poo you've gotta buy starting out. Definitely better once you're up to speed, but scouts costing supplies, a tiny initial cargo hold, and a need to buy the mining and excavating etc doohickies really adds up.
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Feb 3, 2019 19:16
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I realize while this will never be what I want (Escape Velocity: Pretty Edition) it's good to hear they did do something about it being so slow.
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Feb 3, 2019 19:18
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My current captain is actually following one who completed the wealth ambition and there are a few things I'm slightly dismayed about. One is that they've taken out a few of my favorite avatar options, my diving suit among them.  Two is that completed officer storylines stay completed with the evolution you picked locked in, which can make things difficult when you want to boost Veils and half the officers that do that don't anymore or cannot be made to do so. Three is that i've actually found a few results that will permanently swipe some of your stats off and It's not that easy to replace those as it was in Seas. Like an event in exploring Traitors Woods knocked 5 Hearts off me and I don't think I'm gonna get that back.
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Feb 3, 2019 19:56
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I bought it yesterday and then all my time vanished like someone was loving about with seasoned hours and steam now says I have 12 hours played? Seems good! I've noticed a few glitches - on my third captain in a line the horologist never showed up in New Winchester, so I never got to look into building the clock in Port Prosper. Hopefully that won't have problems further down the line. Also, three times now when just flying through the Reach a random event has popped up that, going by the qualities listed, has something to do with the war, but there's no text describing the choices to make and no text talking about the results, so I don't know what's up with that. Also despite putting like 90 hours into sunless sea it took me an embarassingly long time to realize I needed to manually set officers at a dock to get the boosts. Gosh, I think, I guess officers just contribute their boosts by recruiting them now! What a nice change for the sequel! I wonder why all these stat checks still give such low odds of success? 
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Feb 3, 2019 20:11
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Caidin posted:Can someone explain to me exactly how I get the attention of the Storm that Speaks? Or where to reliably find the Clay Conductor? I found the Clay Conductor at the Bit Between in Albion (where you get the workworld tour), but I'm not sure if he's always there. Highlights of the game for me so far have been just barely making it home after a dead end exploring what I expected to be a shortcut through the Traitor's Wood left me doubling back and out of both food and fuel and killing what I think was the Curator from Sunless Sea and looting the treasure for the blue gem my Zee captains gave him long ago. On the flip side, I feel like the blue passports joke at the Albion relay cuts maybe a little too raw this close to the end. I saw the humour but it came with a bitter tinge.
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Feb 4, 2019 03:27
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Caidin posted:Can someone explain to me exactly how I get the attention of the Storm that Speaks? Or where to reliably find the Clay Conductor? I got a notch of its attention from contemplating the Sun's corpse at the Mausoleum and flubbing the roll. Like the other person I have seen the Conductor twice at the Workworld port.
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Feb 4, 2019 06:04
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Reveilled posted:I found the Clay Conductor at the Bit Between in Albion (where you get the workworld tour), but I'm not sure if he's always there. GreyjoyBastard posted:I got a notch of its attention from contemplating the Sun's corpse at the Mausoleum and flubbing the roll. Yeah I went and found him there, thank you. It's weird that he was like the first officer in the game but it's only in the official release that he has a plot. It looks theres still only one quartermaster still?
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Feb 4, 2019 06:09
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So since crewmember quests don't reset, I think I shouldn't finish my Repentant Devil questline because both of my options are having him leave the ship? There's a third option to get him to stick around but I need a quality from him I never got. Unless it comes from talking to him about Charon or capturing a Chorister Bee I guess. No idea how to even go about capturing a Chorister Bee, for one thing.
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Feb 4, 2019 08:57
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https://twitter.com/failbettergames/status/1092396987763355650
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Feb 4, 2019 14:10
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If anyone spots either the HML Weregild or Simons’ Nest around the game I’d love to see screenshots!
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Feb 4, 2019 14:20
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Duck and Cover posted:I realize while this will never be what I want (Escape Velocity: Pretty Edition) it's good to hear they did do something about it being so slow. I keep buying Escape Velocity-likes but they've never recaptured that feeling the way they should. Endless Sky came close, mostly because it blatantly copies it.
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Feb 4, 2019 14:33
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I’ve been trying to recommend the Sunless games to people and really struggling to convey their mood in words. “Like a dilapidated glasshouse by a stately home” is about the best I can do?
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Feb 4, 2019 14:43
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Has anyone found any Quartermasters besides the Aunt yet? I'm seeing if I can finish all the officer quests in one run before finishing the Song of the Sky.
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Feb 4, 2019 14:57
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Reveilled posted:On the flip side, I feel like the blue passports joke at the Albion relay cuts maybe a little too raw this close to the end. I saw the humour but it came with a bitter tinge. London’s young weep as the Colonists come out a-voting. “Ruled by the dead!” the Portly Paradoxist cries. He alone seems to think it’s a good idea. A future wound in bandages is increasing...
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Feb 4, 2019 15:36
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I hope this fixes the UI bugs on 4k monitors, it's probably my biggest gripe with the game right now, I have to change the resolution down every time my captain levels up, and can't read tooltips for things close to the screen edge. vegetables posted:London’s young weep as the Colonists come out a-voting. “Ruled by the dead!” the Portly Paradoxist cries. He alone seems to think it’s a good idea. Wish I had sided with the tacketies now, in retrospect
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Feb 4, 2019 18:08
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Reveilled posted:I hope this fixes the UI bugs on 4k monitors, it's probably my biggest gripe with the game right now, I have to change the resolution down every time my captain levels up, and can't read tooltips for things close to the screen edge. if you go full tacketies you discover the only way you can get ministry passports is on the off chance you can loot them off stovepipe dreadnaughts - which stop spawning for the most part once you roll the stovepipes out of the Reach. makes sense, I mean, the tacketies don't exactly have their own railway to Albion but it was a bit of a shock when after liberating the Reach for my glorious comrades I, uh, got very stuck in retrospect, definitely turn in enough port reports to the stovepipes at first to get two sets of ministry paperwork so you can get a passport to the next zone!
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Feb 4, 2019 18:29
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A sandbox exploration/trading game with a top-down perspective set in a Weird Space universe broken down into color-coded regions with their own geographic peculiarities and environmental hazards and populated by all kinds of colorful inhuman characters who dwell in distinctive ports and rely on expendable drivers of steaming rattling vehicles to transport all kinds of strange, slimy, sinister, living or plainly impossible cargo that still makes sense in the big picture of richly detailed cosmic lore? Yeah, Skies is not a sequel to Sunless Sea. It's a spiritual successor to Vangers: One for the Road.
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Feb 4, 2019 18:45
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Ephemeron posted:A sandbox exploration/trading game with a top-down perspective set in a Weird Space universe broken down into color-coded regions with their own geographic peculiarities and environmental hazards and populated by all kinds of colorful inhuman characters who dwell in distinctive ports and rely on expendable drivers of steaming rattling vehicles to transport all kinds of strange, slimy, sinister, living or plainly impossible cargo that still makes sense in the big picture of richly detailed cosmic lore? Heh. That brought back memories. What an amazing game it was.
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Feb 4, 2019 19:35
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Reveilled posted:Wish I had sided with the tacketies now, in retrospect Why would you side with the Victorian era British Empire anyway? Lum_ posted:if you go full tacketies you discover the only way you can get ministry passports is on the off chance you can loot them off stovepipe dreadnaughts - which stop spawning for the most part once you roll the stovepipes out of the Reach. You can get them from Sweet Jane in Lustrum as well for turning in two Stovepipe nameplates. AFAIK dreadnoughts still keep spawning around Port Prosper.
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Feb 4, 2019 19:53
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i I've always owned sunless sea and kinda wanna get into it. How big of a game is it? like 15 hours and done kinda deal? I just started a dude and travelled the coast and got killed by an iceburg.
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Feb 4, 2019 19:57
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queeb posted:i I've always owned sunless sea and kinda wanna get into it. How big of a game is it? like 15 hours and done kinda deal? I just started a dude and travelled the coast and got killed by an iceburg. TBH I'd suggest reading the LP instead.
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Feb 4, 2019 20:06
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vetinari100 posted:Why would you side with the Victorian era British Empire anyway? huh, that's a better rate than Creepy Smile Guy in Port Prosper gives for the same thing (but then again dreadnaughts are harder to kill than tackety scouts) As for dreadnaught spawns, they do after you knock them out of New Winchester, but I think there's a total victory tier beyond that - haven't gotten to it yet, but I got the event for stovepipes retreating and new homesteads popping up and I still don't get the "defeated the stovepipes in the Reach" tale for my storyteller ambition. queeb posted:i I've always owned sunless sea and kinda wanna get into it. How big of a game is it? like 15 hours and done kinda deal? I just started a dude and travelled the coast and got killed by an iceburg. sunless skies is much bigger, each "plane of existence" is a touch smaller than sunless sea and there's 4 of them basically I wouldn't play sunless seas without hacking your boat to be fast and invincible so you can go through the stories; the core gameplay is much more grindy Lum_ fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Feb 4, 2019 |
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Feb 4, 2019 20:06
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Sekenr posted:Heh. That brought back memories. What an amazing game it was. I rest my case.
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Feb 4, 2019 20:12
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Is the Eleutheria Relay in Albion? I'm not done with Albion yet but it's worth knowing where it is
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Feb 4, 2019 20:27
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The Vosgian Beast posted:Is the Eleutheria Relay in Albion? I'm not done with Albion yet but it's worth knowing where it is it was out in the far west of the Reach for me. absolute rear end end of nowhere.
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Feb 4, 2019 20:35
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Speaking of Eleutheria, I did a little bit of reading up when I was looking at which locomotive I wanted to upgrade to and decided I wanted the Altani Outrider which is, unfortunately, only sold at Eagle's Empyrean it looks like. As such I have several questions: I know that heading to Eleutheria is a quasi-one-way trip as you have to find a new relay elsewhere to get back to the Reach and that it's a pretty hostile environment. If I head there with the starting locomotive and not a lot of upgrades what are the odds I'm going to get torn to shreds before I find EE and get my fancy new ride?
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Feb 4, 2019 20:41
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Meiteron posted:Speaking of Eleutheria, I did a little bit of reading up when I was looking at which locomotive I wanted to upgrade to and decided I wanted the Altani Outrider which is, unfortunately, only sold at Eagle's Empyrean it looks like. The good news there is the relay out is in spitting distance of the port you can buy an Outrider at so if you make it there your gold. That said 30 Hull is... very little to most beasties out in the dark so things are gonna get dicey depending on how long you gotta look for EE.
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Feb 4, 2019 20:51
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Hey, just passing on this tip because I was one of the ones nodding Sunless Sea to make the engine faster: No access to modding yet, but the game tolerates Cheat Engine’s speedhack option very well. I find 3-4x comfortable for traveling, 1-2x comfortable for combat. https://www.neogaf.com/threads/use-cheat-engine-to-speed-up-games.1164528/
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Feb 4, 2019 21:22
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Lum_ posted:if you go full tacketies you discover the only way you can get ministry passports is on the off chance you can loot them off stovepipe dreadnaughts - which stop spawning for the most part once you roll the stovepipes out of the Reach. You can also get a couple of permits by handing in enough requests at the nature reserve. It's a one-time reward but it's enough to get you to Albion.
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Feb 4, 2019 21:30
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So, regarding Dilly, she's a baby version of the bazaar, right? Not THE bazaar obviously, but I'm pretty sure she's an infant version of the the same species of messenger crab that the bazaar is.
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Feb 4, 2019 23:19
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queeb posted:How big of a game is it? like 15 hours and done kinda deal? Oh. Oh no. Oh my no. Like 15 hours and you almost maybe have kind of a grasp on what's going on and are starting to get into the zone. Then you get eaten by a sea urchin the size of a city block and told to start over.
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Feb 5, 2019 01:55
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Cantorsdust posted:Hey, just passing on this tip because I was one of the ones nodding Sunless Sea to make the engine faster: Yeah, seconded - do install a hotkey or two, though. for some reason i can't get a hotkey to re-accelerate the speed but i was too lazy to test more than 2-3 options Really liking this game so far. I can tell that Alexis Kennedy's input here was more limited, but the prose is fun in slightly different ways. And I wish to reiterate that the first visit around Albion is great.  whoever animated the Clockwork Sun is a genius
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Feb 5, 2019 06:29
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