A Delicious Guide to Fallen London

Chapter 4: Lodgings & Social Actions
Continued from: Chapter 3: Traveling

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This Chapter is about what you can do inside your Lodgings, and what Social Actions are available for new players at the time of writing.

Let's go through these things in an orderly manner from top to bottom:

1) A Professional Reward
2) Attend to Matters of Society and Scandal
3) Write Letters
4) FIND NEW STORIES: Chat With the Local Gossip
5) Open a way to other parts of the city
6) Invite a friend to join you in something terribly intellectual
7) Invite a friend to join you in something rather shadowy
8) Invite a friend to join you in something potentially dangerous

X) List of Available Lodgings

1 - A Professional Reward

A Professional Reward is available for players who have adopted a Profession. The reward can be collected once per week, whenever the weekly trigger "Time, the Healer" has been triggered. Upon triggering, there will be a notification in the "Messages"-tab.

Top tip: Leave the latest "Time, the Healer" message undeleted, so you will know roughly when it will arrive next. It's once every 7 days.

Let's have a look at our reward:

Choosing to use Professional Perks:

NOTE: Losing half of a Menace will require 2x Professional perks

Choosing Second Chances:

Onwards:

Choosing the artist's reward:

Big stats increase!

The second chances are displayed next to your Main Qualities:

One of each second chance

2) Attend to Matters of Society and Scandal

Calling Card: First contact. We will explore this option later.
Caligula's: We don't need Making Waves until we are PoSI. Private Supper is a better Social Action, if you have high enough Persuasive to use it (see below).
Snub: We don't need this option until our Influence has reached its maximum capacity, or someone of our contacts is hostile towards us.

Name a pet: Silly, but possible. Pets are available at The Bazaar (see next chapter).
Private Supper: We will need a bit of extra Persuasive to unlock this option. It's a very good social action indeed!

Easy confidence: boosts Persuasive at the cost of Confident Smiles. Useful if you get a bunch of extras somehow. Other stats have this option elsewhere at Lodgings, I will show them later on.

Dante's: available only after acquiring PoSI status.

"Impossible!" -icon is the game developers' way of showing that this feature is currently under development, and will be soon available for the players

Protege

As a protege, you can increase your main qualities up to 100. Remember that all main qualities at 100+ is also one of the many requirements for becoming a Person of Some Importance (PoSI); and also remember that the stat gain from Training Professions ends at 70. Each mentor can only teach each protege only 1 of the main characteristic. SO if you want to improve multiple stats, you will need multiple mentors. To become a protege, contact senior Fallen London players. One good place for this is the official Failbetter Games forum.

Social Invitations
Let's explore the Send a Calling Card option:

This button will suggest someone who has recently been logged in as a potential acquaintance. If you mark your Journal as Private from the Myself-tab (see Chapter 6), you will not be recommended as an acquaintance to random people. But even if your Journal is Private, people who know your in-game nickname can still send you Calling Cards by typing in your nickname.

After the Calling Card has been accepted, other Social Actions with that person will become available.

We have some earlier acquaintances from earlier Chapters of this guide. Let's choose Caligula's:

Social action messages
Your social action invitations can be found from your Messages tab:

The results of your social action invitations can also be found from your Messages tab:

NOTE: Check your Messages tab regularly for incoming social invitations! Accepting them rewards both of you.

3) Write Letters

Write a letter: Most of the time, you can write the whatever message you want to send to go along with the social invitation (see Caligula's above) without having to pay 1 pound postage for a letter.
Choose a new profession: This will abandon your current profession without accepting a new profession. We will explore it next, after we have explored this menu.
Arrange a meeting: Requires Favourable Circumstances to be useful. I will show you later.

Present: The gift card can come up naturally. If it doesn't, and it's Christmas or birthday or something, 1 FATE (see Chapter 5) is a very small amount of money to pay.
Insist on... Notability requires PoSI status. We can ignore this for now.
Arrange Favourable Circumstances: With money, you can "draw cards early". Works only with a few specific cards, which can be seen at the "Arrange a Meeting" storylet above.

Examining "Arrange a meeting..." option:

Requires some connections with the Factions (available at the Carnival) and a Favourable Connections (purchaseable)
I don't have these yet, so I will choose "Perhaps Not." and go back.

Next, let's get rid of our profession to show how it's done:

Choose a New Profession:

Without a Profession, the following Storylet is now available in your Lodgings:

NOTE: "Normal" (= non-training) professions are available from Opportunity Cards. These will typically require Connected: Faction 25.

4) FIND NEW STORIES: Chat With the Local Gossip

NOTE: For now, this page is nearly empty. However, as certain stories progress and you meet new key NPC people in Fallen London, these NPCs will be included also onto this page. Come back later in the game.

Going to Carnival: You can also go to the Carnival through the "Travel" button (see previous Chapter), which will not consume an action. Clicking on this button does consume an action.
House of Chimes: Exceptional Friends only.
Intimate of Devils: Additional story content purchaseable with money.

A Note about Jack: really high stat requirements!

Let's attempt to go to House of Chimes:

Exceptional Friends only. See Chapter 5.

5) Open a way to other parts of the city

NOTE: When the location text says "most interesting to players with Statistic 60+", you should take this seriously. It is possible that there are 0 Storylets open in that location until your stats have reached that point. Usually, you will want to raise the stats much higher than the minimum in order to open more Storylets in the location in addition to the earliest ones.

NOTE: When a bunch of "bulk" items are required to open up new parts in the city, buying them all from the Bazaar will typically cost more than it's worth. A better way to gain the items is to find out a Storylet which pays off in the item you need for unlocking, and then repeating that Storylet multiple times. The main reason for this is that you buy from the Bazaar at full price; but sell in only at half price (or even less). Therefore, selling lots of item A to buy lots of item B is less profitable than completing Storylets which pay off in B directly. When I mention "available from the Bazaar", I typically mean that if you are missing just a couple of items from the required amount, you might purchase them from the Bazaar rather than look for a Storylet which pays off in the desired item.

We have access to these already. In the past, they were not open by default; you had to spend 1 action to open them up.

Greyfields 1879 sources. Can also be bought at The Bazaar (see Chapter 5). Such a big quantity of wine would be quite expensive to buy from The Bazaar; other acquisition methods are preferred. This will apply to other "bulk items" as well.

The Palace kind of continues where Veilgarden leaves off. If you are interested in Connected:Bohemian, Connected:Society and/or Connected:The Duchess Storylets, opening up The Shuttered Palace should be a priority. Otherwise, it can wait for a while.

Surface currency sources. Can also be purchased from The Bazaar.

Wolfstack Docks kind of continues where Watchmakers' Hill leaves off. If you are most interested in Dangerous Storylets, opening up Wolfstack Docks should be a priority. Otherwise, it can wait for a while.

Can be purchased from The Bazaar - Merrigans Exchange (see Chapter 5: The Bazaar). Difficult to find otherwise. Since you need only 1, this is a great purchase.

You will want to to open up The Forgotten Quarter quickly regardless of your other Main Quality progress. The Forgotten Quarter is an extremely interesting place story-wise, and once you reach Watchful 60, there will be a lot of consecutive things to do which will eventually result in unlocking a Scholar of Correspondence 1 quality - which is the entry requirement into The University (see below). The Forgotten Quarter acts as a gateway point not only for The University, but also to Cave of the Nadir. Both of these locations are very, very profitable places to have access to in the mid- and late games.

Stat requirement

The Flit kind of continues where The Spite leaves off. If you are most interested in Shadowy Storylets, opening up The Flit should be a priority.

You will need to do a bunch of expeditions in the Forgotten Quarter to achieve this. Those expeditions will take ages to complete. And you will end up doing them.

Opening up The University through The Forgotten Quarter is highly profitable for the mid- and late game, and it should be a priority regardless of your other Main Quality progress.

NOT RECOMMENDED. You will need Scholar of Correspondence 1 in order to do anything meaningful INSIDE the University. University access without Scholar is not useful, unfortunately.

Rat on a string sources. Also available from The Bazaar.

The Labyrinth of Tigers is a very strange place. No stat requirement to enter. There are multiple successive Coils in the Labyrinth. Each Coil has its own entry requirements. This buys access only to the Tourist Area of the Labyrinth, where there is very, very little to do. Consequently, opening up the Labyrinth should NOT be an early game priority.

Mahogany Hall is much more interesting at Qualities 120+ rather than 95+. Should NOT be an early game priority.
Bribing your way into the Flit is recommended if you run out of things to do in Spite before reaching Shadowy 50. Moon pearl sources.

6) Invite a friend to join you in something terribly intellectual

Chess: winner gains 3x Second chance, loser gains 2.
Technologists: "The Surface" refers to the real world. So, you can invite a friend to play Fallen London through this action.
Every stone: If you have extra second chances, you can turn them into stats.

Let's try chess:

Sent.

We can track the progress from the Messages-tab:

7) Invite a friend to join you in something rather shadowy

Suspicious loitering: Unlike with the other 3 stats, this option will NOT gain you second chances. Rather, you will loot something together.
Thinking about death: Invited a friend to play Fallen London. Even though the text is something quite different, that is what it does.
Tricks and traps and treats: If you have extra second chances, you can turn them into stats.

8) Invite a friend to join you in something potentially dangerous

Sparring Bout: Gives second chances (Hard-Earned Lesson = Dangerous). Winner gets 1 extra.
All this blood... invites a friend to play Fallen London.
Nurse a friend: It might be a good idea to agree about this action beforehand with a friend, rather than randomly try to send it to people.

Poison: Knife and Cadle is a prohibited game. Nevertheless, it's available from Watchmaker's Hill. Abominable Salts available from the Bazaar.
Strength of scars: If you have extra second chances, you can turn them into stats.

List of available Lodgings

Next up in A Delicious Guide to Fallen London:
Chapter 5: The Bazaar & FATE