A Delicious Guide to Fallen London
Chapter 5: The Bazaar & FATEContinued from: Chapter 4: Lodgings & Social Actions
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This Chapter is about The Bazaar. The Bazaar is one of the tabs, opened by clicking on it:
Upon opening the Bazaar, we enter the "Sell My Things" screen:
Let's sell the diamond we had hidden in our boot during our stay in the Prison:
The Echoes (= currency in Fallen London) we have at any point in time is displayed on the left hand side of the screen, above the FATE we have:
Most of the shops in The Bazaar sell items which are put into the equippable items slots at the "Myself"-tab. We will examine how "Myself"-tab (inventory) works in the next chapter.
For now, let's focus on non-equippable item purchases. The most important of these can be found from the following 3 shops: Merrigans Exchange (convertible "story items"), Nikolas Pawnbroakers (items to reduce menaces) and Penstock's Land Agency (better lodgings). You can explore the rest of the shops by yourself.
Let's start with Merrigans Exchange:
That is a lot of things!
Most of the cheap items are "bulk items", meaning that you may receive 30+, 50+ or even 100+ of them at once as a reward from a Storylet. Many of the "bulk items" are used to purchase progress in the stories. Most of them are also easily available through the white Storylets. However, if you are unavailable to find e.g. a source of Prisoner's Honey which would be available to you at the specific levels of your Main Qualities you currently have, remember that you can collect other stuff instead, sell it to the Bazaar, and purchase the missing bulk items from Merrigans.
NOTE: You buy from the Bazaar at full price; but sell in only at half price (or even less). Consequently, selling lots of "bulk item" A to buy lots of "bulk item" B is not profitable. Instead, you should try to find a Storylet which directly pays off in "bulk item" B and complete that Storylet repeatedly multiple times.
I will purchase 100x Jade Fragment so that I can demonstrate how "bulk item" conversions work in the next Chapter. Your character should not do this: buying Jade Fragments is kind of a waste of Echos, since it's simple to gain a lot of Jade Fragments per action by performing shadowy stuff in Spite.
I will also purchase 150x Primordial Shriek, because...you'll find it out later in this Chapter.
Let's move on to Nikolas Pawnbrokers:
Notice how my current inventory amount is displayed on the screen. That's quite helpful!
In the above picture, I have already previously purchased 1x of each of the following 3 items: Laudanum, Tincture of Vigour and Ablution Absolution. These are items which reduce Menaces. I will show you how to use them in the next Chapter.
To get information about what the items on sale in the shops ARE and what they DO, move your cursor above the item icon to see a yellow text box:
You should remember that Menaces can also be reduced in your Lodgings, especially as Social Actions (see previous Chapter).
Onwards to Penstock's Land Agency:
NOTE: At the time of writing, Penstock's is a new occurrence in the game, replacing the old methods for purchasing Lodgings. The Lodgings list or the way they are displayed may differ from what is currently available in the game.
You can own multiple lodgings at once. In fact, at the time of writing, there is no way to sell or get rid of any of your Lodgings.
I will purchase "Key to a Rooftop Shack" using the Primordial Shrieks I purchased earlier from Merrigan's Exchange:
In the next chapter, I will show you how to move your Lodgings to the Rooftop Shack in order to acquire the promised 3 card.
FATE
To end off this Chapter, I will briefly describe how NEX and FATE works.
Real money can be used to buy NEX in the NEX tab:
NOTE: Because the NEX tab layout and contents change quite often with additional storyline content being included in the game, and the payment options have been increasing as well, I will not include a screenshot of the NEX tab contents in this Guide because it would become outdated very quickly. See for yourself what is currently available!
NEX is the StoryNexus platform currency used commonly across all StoryNexus platform games. Inside Fallen London, NEX can be used as FATE with 1:1 conversion rate inside the Fallen London game universe. FATE is the Fallen London currency.
It is possible to gain some small amounts of FATE inside the FL universe as a reward for some actions/storylets; but gaining NEX inside the game is not possible.
FATE is used to open up additional "fate-locked" content: stories, actions, Exceptional Friendship, etc. Some of the "Fate-locked" content is purchased from the NEX tab; some from Gold Color Opportunity Cards.
Your current NEX and FATE totals are tracked on the left hand side, below your Echos, above your Main Qualities:
In the next Chapter, we will explore equips, item usage and item conversions.
Onwards -> Chapter 6: Myself-tab (inventory)