It seems like only yesterday that we published our last roadmap blog. But time is in fact a liar: it was over two months ago. Some things have changed since then, some things draw nearer, and so it is time once again to make our announcements.

Today: Hearts' Game, Season of Devotions

The Season of Dares has ventured its last, and the atmosphere within the parlour becomes one of quiet reverence. Players of the game come and go, but there are those whose love of the game never wavers – a love that can only be called 'obsession'.

They await you in the Gamekeeper's Cottage: the Queen of Cod and the three Priests – of Smiths, Magpies, and Briars.

Hearts' Game begins the Season of Devotions.

You should know how this works by now. Four new accomplices, new story, new mechanics, and various balance adjustments.

Besides the new additions, we have as usual some balance tweaks, intended to change how the game plays and move accomplices up and down in players' evaluations.

The Page of Gambits is, for season four, banned. Its underlying mechanical concept isn't really something that can be merely tuned to be balanced, so it needs more of a mechanical rework; expect it to return in a future season, much changed by the experience.
The Knight of Skin has had its Progress gain tuned down slightly, to make it a less obvious choice in some cases. It's still a very high-end Preparation accomplice, and I expect it to remain a key part of a lot of winning teams.
The Knight of Ribs, the King of Tallow, and especially the King of Spines have all had their progress gain tuned up.

The Fruits of the Zee Festival

A redesigned Fruits of the Zee festival returns this Thursday, September the 7th. Another of our free annual events, available to all Londoners. A new story, items, and activities.

Go wreck-diving off the coast of Mutton Island. Recover barnacle-encrusted treasures (or trash) from the bottom of the zee. Make bargains. Meet the King-in-Coral who presides over the festivities.

The Fruits of the Zee festival will run for two weeks, through to September the 21st.

Enhanced Exceptional Friendship

Much earlier this year, we mentioned we were working on a second tier of subscription to complement Exceptional Friendship; we're now at a place where we can start talking about the details of what that will contain. We expect to launch this after Fruits of the Zee, before Hallowmas.

Our goal with this is to add a discounted way for our most invested players to play through Fallen London's now quite long back catalogue of Exceptional Stories, as we know that most current subscribers haven't played most of the existing stories. The main benefit of enhanced Exceptional Friendship is this – one back catalogue story a month in addition to the all-new monthly stories. But it also includes some other goodies.

The enhanced Exceptional Friendship subscription will include:

Obviously, everything included in the existing Exceptional Friendship: An extra candle, a monthly Exceptional Story (and Memory of a Tale), extra outfit slots, more opportunity cards, and access to the House of Chimes
An additional Exceptional Story every month, chosen from a rotating menu of past stories.
- There will be six stories on offer every month, and the menu rotates so that every story is available for two months at a time.
- This is a selection meant to include a mix of stories that will, over time, work its way through every existing Exceptional Story (with the exception of Flint).
- Stories that are newer than a year old will not appear in this selection, but otherwise the ordering and choices have been curated to evenly distribute fan favourites and have a variety of stories on offer.
- You also have the option of resetting two of them instead of playing one from the selection that's new to you.
- You will accrue Memories of a Tale from these stories as normal (so, if you choose to reset two stories, you'll get two Memories).
- You'll need to log in and choose your story every month.
Bonus actions every month.
- You will get three special refreshes of seven actions each, so a little better than a Fate action refresh or two coffees.

To go along with this update, we'll also be adding some new opportunities and story to the House of Chimes. This will be available to all subscribers, with a few extra goodies for enhanced subscribers.

The price of Enhanced Exceptional Friendship will be $16.50 USD, or $7.50 more than the current pricing on an Exceptional Friendship ($9.00 USD). Relative to buying a back catalogue Exceptional Story with Fate, this is about a 40% discount.

Railway Enhancements

We originally gave this a late August date, but it has since slipped for a number of reasons. A set of small expansions to existing Railway locales, plus a few small extras; set now to be released in October. This expansion includes:

New research projects in the library at Jericho
A new activity in the Magistracy of the Evenlode
Story additions to Burrow-Infra-Mump