Carnelian is here, tweaked slightly from the roadmap, but replete with new content and improvements to combat:

CONTENT

Visit Saviour’s Rocks, seat of the Tree of Ages

Guest content by Richard Cobbett, highly appropriate for some late-night, lights-off Halloween zailing: Saviour’s Rocks, home of the sorrow spiders.

Richard is a UK-based freelance writer and journalist specialising in games and story, whose words have appeared for over a decade in publications like PC Gamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer and IGN. He infamously hates spiders, so having him write an island full of them seemed a perfect revenge for his parody of Fallen London, Fallen Swindon.

Read about his experience of writing the island on his blog.

Speak to the Merchant Venturer

He has need of a reliable agent – or a resourceful one – and he will make it worth your while. Find him in Fallen London.

There are also new pretties to marvel at, like the Dawn Machine Grand Geode and Port Carnelian. Stories for these are coming soon.

COMBAT

Balance

The combat system has been rebalanced to address feedback from the community. You should notice the following top level differences:

Provided you are properly equipped and have decent combat stats for the area of the zee you are exploring (the further from Fallen London you go, the more dangerous the waters), you should be doing more damage than the enemies you are encountering and have more health.

Combat is now less about whether you can survive each individual battle, but more about controlling the threat of sustained damage. Can you make it home with your ship in its current state? Will you be able to survive another battle?

Combat should generally be a bit more forgiving, until you reach less than 50% hull integrity. At this point, you have to start worrying about things other than just the damage dealt to your ship.

You should now be completing firing solutions faster, but doing less damage. This means killing enemies (or being killed) will take more shots. This is to allow for a mid-combat decision to disengage when you find yourself in over your head with an enemy much tougher than you.

Enemies should no longer be running circles around you. Generally speaking, organic creatures will be more agile than ships, but provided you have a decent engine equipped for the size of ship you are in, you should be able to keep pace with all but the fastest foes.

Fixes

Enemies life, hull, crew and damage numbers have been rebalanced.

Enemy speeds and turning circles have been rebalanced.

Player ship hull values have been rebalanced.

Player weapon damage numbers have been rebalanced.

Player deck weapon ranges have been increased.

Enemies now spawn more frequently and more evenly across the entire map. The spawn locations have also been balanced, so you should no longer be encountering very tough enemies close to home waters.

Fighting multiple enemies is now possible. You are only able to target one enemy at a time, but they will be able to attack you simultaneously, so be careful when engaging multiple foes!

Removed selection circles around enemies when they are selected.

All enemies how have the same clickable area size, so you should no longer have problems clicking smaller enemies.

Not all ships will have the same equipment slots anymore. Small ships will only have a deck weapon slot, medium sized ships will add a forward slot and large vessels will feature an aft slot.

Combat attack tooltips should give you better at-a-glance information and no longer obscure one another.

Repairing at zee should no longer be as time consuming or expensive. However, if your ship is too damaged (below 50% integrity), you will need to dry-dock to repair it.

Features

New combat user interface. This has been visually improved and now allows you to toggle in and out of the combat UI at any point. Being engaged by an enemy will automatically open this screen.

Cannon, Flensing and Torpedo weapons now have different animations.

While in combat, if you or your foe’s hull is lower than 50%, you (or they) will start being exposed to additional damage! For example: Most ships will start killing off your crew. Bat swarms will begin devouring your supplies. The voice of the Lorn-Fluke will increase your terror. Expect more to come…

In addition to enemies dealing damage to your crew, you will also be able to kill off their crew. When a ship has no crew left, you will be able to approach it and collect your reward. Eventually, you will be able to send these ships home with members of your own crew as a prize ship.

If you want to attract an enemy’s attention, nothing is quite as effective as a blast from your horn.

More items have been added that will allow you to change the course of combat: Rattus Faber Assistants can help repair your hull while engaged. Strange Catches will lure submerged zee-beasts from below the water back to the surface. Blue Scintillack will immediately fill all of your firing solutions – this can now be used multiple times, rather than consuming the item. The Unclear Device will obscure you from your enemies, giving you time to escape or manoeuvre behind them. Flares will light up the zee, illuminating anyone nearby and speeding up the time it takes to build up a firing solution.

Information on the damage you receive will now be recorded in your log book.

New boat abilities/hotkey user interface. The old interface has been re-designed to match the style of the combat interface. In addition, the buttons will now be greyed out to indicate when they can and can’t be used.

The Hold page has been redesigned, to give you detailed information about your currently equipped weapons and items that are available for use in combat.

The officers page in the gazetteer has been redesigned, making it clearer who you currently have equipped and allowing you to equip officers directly from the gazetteer, removing the need to have your officers panel out on the main HUD to speak to or switch officers.

Known Issues

You should not be able to close the combat interface while engaged in a fight with an enemy, though it is currently a bit temperamental. We are working to improve this.

As ever, we appreciate your feedback!