Hello, delicious friends! We hope you have enjoyed the conclusion to Evolution, and your visits to Irem. While that story has concluded, the cadence of updates to Fallen London continues. Here’s what we will have for you in July, August, and beyond:

Mechanical changes to Menace Items

So this is a relatively big mechanical change; let me walk you through why we’re making it, and how exactly it’ll work.

Right now, menace-reducing items mostly allow for various unintuitive ways to avoid menace zones. You let Suspicion get to level 8, panickedly put on the Sober Dress (taking care not to advance the story so the game doesn’t have a chance to send you to New Newgate), and presto – you’re at 7 Suspicion.

Until you forget you did that, take off the Sober Dress, and the Constables promptly show up.

This play pattern is one of several things in Fallen London that are a bit obtuse and hard to engage with for a new player. Because of their propensity to break content and their limited utility (besides having at least one item that reduces a given menace), we’ve basically had a self-imposed moratorium on doing new items that reduce menaces, for a long time.

In early July, we’ll be updating the game to change how menace reducing items work. Rather than lowering your Menace quality directly, they will actively reduce how many change points you get, as long as you have them equipped.

This is a more intuitive mechanic; the Tracklayer’s Helmet now actually makes you get fewer head wounds, rather than retroactively suppressing head wounds you already got. It gives these items a more proactive utility – as they’ll now actually save you actions, rather than just delaying the inevitable. And you won’t get immediately sent to the tomb-colonies for putting on a pair of socks.

The way this works in detail is:

Items will now say ‘reduces Wounds build-up’ in their tooltip, indicating that this is a different kind of item enhancement.
When you gain change points in a menace, menace-reducing items will reduce how much you gain by between zero and two change points. The maths is set up so that you should get roughly 10% fewer change points, and it shouldn’t matter whether you’re accruing a menace in a few big effects, or through a lot of small effects.
Basically, if an effect gives you 10 change points or more, menace reduction has a 100% chance of triggering and reducing the gain by one point. That probability scales down for smaller effects. This is because we can’t give you 0.9 of a change point, but over time it should even out to that 10% reduction.
When menace reduction kicks in, you’ll see it reflected in the quality change messages.
If you have a lot of menace reduction, or an effect gives a lot of points in a menace quality, this has a chance to trigger twice (thus reducing it by two change points). So that ‘10%, over time’ relationship holds even if you’re getting slammed with 15 or 20 change point effects.
Wearing multiple menace-reducing items will be effective, but with some diminishing returns. Each point of menace reduction is a little more than half as effective as the previous one.
None of this affects branches that give you negative change points – you don’t have to wear a helmet to make healing more effective.
Items that increase menace gain will work just like this, but in reverse; they will give you a roughly 10% increase in how much menace you accrue.

We expect that this will be an adjustment for some of you. I know a lot of players have gotten used to just letting menaces get to 8 and then wearing a helmet to retroactively undo their head wounds. But we’re making this change because we think it’ll be a clearer mechanic, especially for players who are not playing with extensive help from guides or the community.

This is, ultimately, a buff to those items – gaining fewer menace change points translates to extra actions over time, especially in situations where you’re gaining a lot of a given menace in a short span of time. It makes menace reduction a bit more comparable to a typical stat increase, which also saves actions.

The current mechanic also stacks in very problematic ways, which has limited our ability to use menace reduction or increasing in items. This new mechanic is designed so that wearing a full suit of wounds-reducing items has an effect, but doesn’t break the game.

We expect to deploy this change on July 6th. After it goes live, there will definitely be a teething period as we fix any issues we didn’t anticipate and make tweaks to the play experience in places; we’re looking, for example, at how punishing menaces are and how easy it is in places to get 8 or more points of a menace at once.

Hearts’ Game: the Season of Dares

The next update to Hearts’ Game comes out in mid-July. It comes with four new cards and adjustments to existing cards and mechanics. This update is planned for July 20th.

Celebrating our 100th Exceptional Friends’ Story

Yes, if you’ve been keeping count, the Exceptional Story for August will be the 100th story in our subscription service. As usual, we’ll be releasing it on the last Thursday of the preceding month, so July 27th.

To go along with the anniversary, we’ll be adding some new items to Mr Chimes' Lost and Found, as we know some of you who’ve been subscribing since the very beginning are running out of things you want to buy.

The celebrations will also include a competition with the chance to win a year’s Exceptional Friendship, so be sure to keep an eye out for that!

Estival 2023: The London Horticultural Show

It's 1899 (again), and London's rose blooms on. It seems that a celebration of the city's endurance – its survival – is in order. Lady ______ has generously donated the use of her private glasshouse to the London Horticultural Society. For the first time since the Fall, the London Horticultural Show has returned!

The London Horticultural Show is Fallen London's summer event for 2023, beginning on 31st July. It's a free, limited-time mass-participation event, open to players of all levels.

Participate in 'flower' arranging. Join the masses competing for the coveted title of 'Best in Show' – or the even more coveted 'Largest Mushroom'. Cultivate unusual greenery (well, brownery) and contribute to the beautification of London in a horticultural event with a Neathy twist.

You will be able to use your Estival tokens from previous years. Items from previous summer festivals will be available again, alongside five new items to collect, and several others that can be earned through the event.

We don’t know (more accurately, can’t know) how long the event will last; it will depend on you, our magnificent community, and just how hard you throw yourselves into the event. We expect between one and two weeks, with a few days after its conclusion for you to pick up any last rewards. As with previous summer events, we will eventually bring the memory of this one to the Waswood, to allow you to revisit the story and obtain some (but not all) of the event's items, should you miss it.

We hope you enjoy this summer’s event! It's a bit of a departure from what we've done in previous years, but one of the advantages of these events is that we get to experiment and find what lands well with the community. We hope that, amid the flowers, fungi, and festivities, there will be something to delight everybody.

August and September

Here’s what you can expect after Estival:

The third expansion to Hearts’ Game: another season with four new cards. Expected in mid-August.
The Railway ‘mini-expansion’: Three small additions to Railway stations. A new small activity at the Evenlode courtroom; new research subjects at the Jericho library; and story expansions to Burrow-infra-Mump. Expected in late August.
The Fruits of the Zee festival returns… with significant changes. Planned for mid-September.

Other things we’ve announced – the Tracklayer’s City and the enhanced Exceptional Friendship tier – are planned for later in 2023, so watch this space for further announcements.