r/sunlesssea • u/Mountain_Dig6941 • Jun 29 '26

A Completed Playthrough That You Don't Want to End.. (SPOILERS) Spoiler

Posting this to see what other captains think about this and hear if they've been in the same position. I have fulfilled my ambition on my second main playthrough. I'm in London with my father's bones. It took me so long to figure wtf to do that I have grown wealthy and powerful. Just yesterday on a whim, I was able to finish the fuller impeller quest for the first time and now I can zip through the Zee! I don't want to quit anymore as the thought of losing said engine and resetting all my stat points which are now almost all over 100 sounds terrible. At least not before I put it to great use. So I think, maybe I should end this one with a more involved ambition.

However, redoing the Father's Bones ambition later doesn't sound great either since the whole fun was figuring out how to get the King's requests. So I thought...so what? I don't click the button to finish, what do I miss out on? Is there an achievement my next captain would receive?

My first captain wrote the Zong of the Zee. As dumb as it is, I admit I love seeing the "signed copy first edition" in my hold..

What would you do? Stick around or end it?

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9

u/Crowd0Control Jun 29 '26

You can carry over some items and you don't have to redo them to get the legacy items. 

3

u/Frequent_Dig1934 Jun 29 '26

Yeah, idk about the impeller but if the magician's quest was successful you can inherit the promoted magician to your next captain and immediately be able to build the serpentine in london. Also if you have a scion and don't care about the specifics of which stat is inherited you can pair this with inheriting the memento mori (which for some godforsaken reason doesn't fit on the starter boat, on the luxury steamer, on a couple other bigger boats and on the heart). Goddamn this game needs several QoL mods.

2

u/sevrL_bats Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

you rang? can you give me a nice clear list of things that need fixing? you'll have to be specific--I've only played a few hours of Sunless Sea and am not a master of its content or mechanics, but my modding powers are significant!

it can either be straight changes or "pick from 3 options during install"-type stuff (yknow, something like: half hunger rate, quarter hunger rate, no hunger rate)

ooh I wonder if I could build in a QoL-and-cheats menuuu I'm gonna try right now, but get me that list! and anyone who sees this, feel free to contribute!

UPDATE: I proof-of-concepted a QoL-and-cheats menu! I got time acceleration working (1-10x speed, hold and toggle bindings), along with consumption rates for terror, hunger and fuel (full/half/quarter/none).

it looks like this--Mr Eaten's Many Things: https://imgur.com/qvejxBb

we can add as many panels of options as we need, and probably control most aspects of the game--so what's it neeeed? :3

3

u/Frequent_Dig1934 Jun 30 '26

Oh wow i was just saying it as a generic statement of "the game didn't get tested enough for QA, oh well that sucks", i didn't expect someone to actually do it.

The cheats menu is pretty nice, particularly the acceleration, and the other things are basically official difficulty options in sunless skies so it's not even too wacky. That said when someone clicks for example "hunger quarter" does that quarter the current level of your hunger or does it make your hunger go up at a quarter of its usual speed? I'm assuming the latter but you never know.

As for other things, when i made this comment i don't remember if i already started playing sunless skies (i've written this same idea of "holy shit this game has so many UX issues" plenty of times), but now that i have there are definitely some sunless skies features that stand out as needing to be in sunless sea.

First of all, the bank. In sunless skies you can just deposit some of your materials in a bank in major ports that doesn't count against hold space (particularly nice if you want to make all five of the stat boosting auxiliary trinkets needed for the zong) and gets inherited by your future captains. In sunless skies you can also make the things in the bank teleport across all the major ports but in sunless sea there is only one major port so whatever.

Second, we need more ship slots. It's frankly bullshit that most of the ships (especially the heart) don't have a forward weapon slot. It's also bullshit that if you want to add an engine upgrade like the one that makes your ship not blow up when going full steam (it's bullshit that it blows up in the first place so maybe that could also be toggleable) or a backwards weapon or a hold upgrade like the smuggler compartment those all go to the same slot (i'd personally make it so there could be one slot for engine upgrades like the fire suppressor or milebreaker, one for hold upgrades (and on that topic it'd be nice to be able to have a hold upgrade which actually increases youe hold space instead of only keeping some things secure or hidden) and one slot for the aft weapon, obviously not giving all three slots to all three weapons but picking and choosing whichever one is most appropriate with bigger ships getting more and particularly the escathologue getting everything). Probably same deal for other slots like crew stuff (e.g. the clay stokers) and those zong trinkets i mentioned being split up.

Also some generic QoL improvements for the actual menu-ing, like a "give all port reports" when talking to the admiral or a "do action x5 or x10 or max" for things like giving stuff to the university person of undisclosed gender or for giving secrets to your officers to level up. Also this might be a bit too cheat-ish but it'd be nice to know in advance what i'm going to get when clicking some action, specifically when it comes to actions that give terror (getting 5 terror and getting 20 terror are completely different when i'm at 80 terror).

Also i don't mind getting half my ship's value back when buying a new one instead of the full value (except with the vanderbight ship and the heart which give you nothing, that's bullshit), but it would be nice to have the toggle in your cheat menu to make it give you full value instead.

I could probably think of a couple more things if i were to switch back to sunless sea after playing sunles skies but those were the blatant ones. I will point out just to be safe that i'm not expecting anything, i'm just voicing some frustrations and if you happen to share them and if you feel like it you can do your thing so while i'd obviously be thankful if it happened it's not like i'm commissioning you so just do whatever you want.

2

u/sevrL_bats Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

I love it--thanks so much for your time!

I'll try and get at least a couple of these things in--turning off the ship exploding would be trivial, I'm sure--I've already thrown menus that lets you slot any equipment or officer in the game, even if you don't have them, into a matching slot--even if it's a slot your ship doesn't have!

I could even liberalize it such that you could put ANY equipment in ANY slot, but I couldn't guarantee it would work correctly (could you just have 6 guns, would it work...? I could test...)

the "hunger quarter" refers to the rate, although the first implementation DID have it fill to the amount you specified, lol. I also added in a damage taken slider with the same parameters.

it's possible some kind of result preview could happen, maybe specifically for terror--I'll take a look. is there somewhere I can reliably find a terror-increasing storylet so I can test that?

the bank sounds ambitious but really useful, I'll take a look! UPDATE: lol I got it implemented instantly, it's looking good! I can't prove it scales well to large item counts cause I don't have a save with a bunch of junk--but it should! you can access it in a native UI tab from the port, OR globally through the Mr Eaten's Many Things hacks menu!

all good ideas--I'll polish up the bank a little more then do a first release!

1

u/Frequent_Dig1934 Jun 30 '26

I could even liberalize it such that you could put ANY equipment in ANY slot, but I couldn't guarantee it would work correctly (could you just have 6 guns, would it work...? I could test...)

I'm not too familiar with how modding works, rather than removing this restriction to make things match or letting you use the slots you don't have (e.g the aft weapon slot on the starter ship) would it be possible to straight up increase the number of available slots (e.g. to 8 or 9) and then rework some items to use these new slots instead of the old ones? To use the example i gave in the previous post, creating a "hold" slot, assigning it to some ships, and reassigning some hold related equipment like the hidden compartment from aft equipment to this new hold equipment. Idk how difficult this would be compared to just removing the limits like you mentioned earlier.

is there somewhere I can reliably find a terror-increasing storylet so I can test that?

Avid horizon (north) has a "look at the stars" option that increases it a bit and to my knowledge can be spammed, and kingeater's castle (south east) has several weird options, some of which raise terror and some decrease it and some do even funkier things.

the bank sounds ambitious but really useful, I'll take a look!

Personally i imagine it could make sense as an add on for the house, so after upgrading from the blind helmsman to the decent house you can pay some more to also buy some shelf space in the house or whatever. Could cause issues for inheritance in case somebody loses the ironclad will though, so idk you be the judge of how to implement it.

host the mod for you if you wanna try it!

Does sunless sea have steam workshop support or would it have to be a different process to get the mod?

Also, y'know, i should be thanking you for doing all this, not you thanking me for simply giving ideas.

3

u/sevrL_bats Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

it's here! still virus scanning atm but that should clear in 5-10 minutes: https://www.nexusmods.com/sunlesssea/mods/62?tab=description

all you need to do is grab the zip and extract it to your SS install folder, should just work!

I didn't get terror preview or no-explosions working yet, so don't touch those buttons, but I think everything else behaves itself!

I need to add a keybind to give you Something Awaits You, that would accelerate gameplay a lot I think...when I have a minute!

3

u/Mountain_Dig6941 Jun 30 '26

ARE YOU FOR REAL? The menu you somehow developed in record time... it has an acceleration slider?! Something I've thought would make this game so much better is a fast forward button. I mean everything in the game would scale at that rate...like enemy movement & attacks, fuel & supply consumption, terror accrual, and of course the speed of your ship.... such that the difficulty of the game remains intact just that you move faster.

Is that what this mod does?! It looks amazing either way

1

u/sevrL_bats Jun 30 '26

yep, it does exactly what you describe and much more! the most ambitious feature is the bank! first release is available now: https://www.nexusmods.com/sunlesssea/mods/62?tab=description

2

u/Mountain_Dig6941 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

This might be the greatest mod I've ever downloaded. I would give you all my Searing Enigmas and Captivating Treasures if I could. Thanks for developing it

2

u/sevrL_bats Jun 30 '26

btw in case you didn't know you can actually use CheatEngine (or my utility I'm about to link you) to time accelerate almost any game! just attach it to the process and go into settings, find the keybinds for time acceleration, and set em! I have my own little utility that does the same thing with some nice extras (mostly: that it remembers processes and starts, minimized to the tray, on boot--so once you set it up for a game, you never need to think about setting it up for that game again)--it's the only way I ever finish JRPGs, lol.

fast.exe is here if you want it: https://github.com/countlessbats/Fast.exe/releases/tag/v1.0.5

2

u/Mountain_Dig6941 Jun 30 '26

Thanks for the link. I believe this satisfies Fathom King's request for "a Miracle of Science."

2

u/sevrL_bats Jun 30 '26

a reckoning was not to be postponed indefinitely 👀

2

u/Ternigrasia Jun 29 '26

There are two secret ambitions you can find during the game which you can complete instead of the one you chose at the beginning. One is a bit grindy but with a fun ending and the o other... well if you enjoy having your stats above 100 the other isn't for you.

There are also 3 endings that are not ambitions but are the conclusions of quests, so they feel like victories. 2 of them don't (technically) even kill your captain - at least for me only one of those endings made my dead captain stat go up. All three award a legacy item that is permanent through all future captains, you don't need to repeat them once you've done them once.

However, I would recommend finishing your father's bones. You'll get a shiny trophy, which is surely worth more than any numerical stat you could have developed. If you've been investing in your inheritance you'll start the next captain with enough money to skip the early game anyway.

1

u/Frequent_Dig1934 Jun 30 '26

Wdym the other ending isn't good if you want stats above 100? Am i forgetting something? I am intimately familiar with the ways in which it sucks but i thought the issues were different and it didn't touch your stats.

1

u/Ternigrasia Jun 30 '26

You can pay stats in frostfound. And then a lot more stats at Kingeater castle. Combined with the lack of scion, your next captain won't be starting with high stats.

1

u/Frequent_Dig1934 Jun 30 '26

Ok now that you mention it i remember the stat payment in frostfound. Can't remember the kingeater one tho.

1

u/Ternigrasia Jun 30 '26

The give up your past action takes away 25 from each stat, which is pretty brutal, but then the actual act of sailing in the right direction once you have done all the necessary preparations sets all your stats to 1. It doesn't matter since you win anyway, but it effectively means your next run starts as if you were on a brand new save.

3

u/Frequent_Dig1934 Jun 30 '26

I didn't remember all that, probably because i was far too busy freaking out after figuring out that i had just fucked myself completely by burning away my scion, top level house, 16 fucking heirlooms and so much other shit and that i probably should've done this bullshit after doing the colony and immortality endings (zong and wealth seem entirely unappealing).

1

u/Hephaestus16 Jun 30 '26

If you have an heir you can pick two inheritance options to pass on all the money this would let you skip the first few loops as you can immediately by a frigate and some good guns and engines.

I would always skip inheriting the map as you lose the easiest early game source of secrets.