Evolution (Guide)

Mid Zailing Content and Onwards

The Evolution storyline is a story in which you help the Dilmun Club doing science. It's mainly tracked with the quality, but the beginning instead uses .

In order to start Evolution, you only need 75 (See this guide), but in order to complete the storyline you will at some point require the following:

• A Ship
• (See Time Passing at Hunter's Keep (Guide))
• Access to and a (See Port Cecil (Guide))
• Access to
• Recommended: Decent levels in , and probably more advanced skills.
• Base 5

Qualities

• : This quality is mostly used in pt. 1 of the story.
• : This is the main tracker quality in the story, and the different sections will be based on your progress with this quality.
• , and , aka naturalist qualities: These are qualities that show how your relation with the Naturalist is. Has some effect on some actions.
• : Shows the progress of your current Dilmun Club meeting.
• : Shows your progress while in Cline
• : Affects some text
• : Progress quality while at Godfall
• : Skill at navigating the Loom of Destiny in Irem
• : Unlocks a Zee-Dream card (see Having Recurring Dreams: Rosy Colours Leaping on the Wall) and affects some texts in Pt.5
• : Required for some actions in pt. 6
• : Acquired in pt. 6, use currently unknown (RP quality?)
• Regretful, Monastic, Organic, Mechanical, Temporal, Cartographic, and : Preparation qualities for pt. 6
• : The name of your diving-bell
• : The health of your diving-bell

The Story

The guide has been split up in several sections based on when the section was released, however you may complete the whole story in one go, should you wish to.

Part 1 - Shells of Regret

This part starts with 75, in . Play A Message from the Dilmun Club and attend the meeting.

Once done with the meeting, you should travel to . Cline is located in . Note that once you're done with this visit you'll end up back in London, so if there are other things you want to do at Zee, do those first.

After Wandering the Streets of Cline, you will get a choice over whether to bring back a fossilised shell or a living shell. This will determine some text later on, as well as which (mechanically identical) unique item you get in part 6.

Once you have extracted the shell, you will have to leave . As you are leaving, you will find the Naturalist, and may either throw him overboard or talk to him. Either choice will affect your naturalist qualities, and you will find yourself back in London. Report back to the Dilmun Club in . This will set to 120 and marks the end of this part.

Part 2 - The Mentor

Covers 1-79

Required items and qualities:

• 120
• 
• 
• 
• (See Time Passing at Hunter's Keep (Guide))
• 
• 

Having finished your meeting with the Dilmun Club, it shouldn't take a long time before you are Contacted by a Youthful Naturalist by opportunity card. After drinking with him for a while at , you will agree to help him in . After reporting to your patron or keeping this to yourself, you will have to return to the Naturalist. Give him a and continue working with him in . This will cost several items. At this point, the Naturalist will ask you to pop by to retrieve a and deliver it to him.

The next section requires you to find the Naturalist's mentor by taking a trip to Zee, more specifically to the Tomb-Colonies in . It might be worth bringing , plus excess scandal you want to lose. Travelling by zee sets to 50, as well as increasing your . You will also gain some naturalist qualities in the process. Find the mentor and spend favours to progress the story. If you didn't bring favours, you have two choices: Either play cards that give favours, or reduce your scandal to 6 repeatedly, and thereby gain favours. Once your has reached 61, it's time to head back to London. Parting ways, temporarily sets to 70 and you may zail back to London.

Back in , A Private Meeting will finish this part of Evolution, setting to 80.

Part 3 - The Experiment

Covers 80-170

Required items and hard challenges:

• 
• 
• (See Port Cecil (Guide) for how to gain this)
• (1 per failure)
• (1 per failure)
• (25 per failure)
• 6, 8 and 10 challenges
• 8 challenges
• (Optional: 3 x , 3 x , 3 x )
• (Optional: 3 x , 1200 x )
• is an advantage

Eventually, you will once again be Summoned to the Club, starting another meeting. You will end up with 300 worth of . This will be required later, so don't sell it! Travel to the Tomb-Colonies again to reunite with the Naturalist, before quickly going back to Zee, this time to . Before you can get there, something unexpected happens, which has to be dealt with. Reduce your to 6 to deal with the situation. Upon dealing with the situation, your will be at 120.

In , you will find The Naturalist on the Shore. In order to progress after this step, you need your own business and two progress qualities: and .

• For , you will need to do the Port Cecil carousel 3 times with higher than , and spending the rostygold you received earlier.
• For , Consider gambling under How to Advance a Science. This will lead to 3 tough chess-matches which you have to win. Losing a game means losing your stake. Be sure to bring several Broken Giants, which cannot be found locally, and preferably a substantial store of Warm Amber, which can only be locally earned slowly via an alternative success. The hardest game is an 10 challenge, staking 25 Warm Amber each game.

With both parts done, Consider logistics. This will lead to another cycle of the Port Cecil carousel, but this time you must make sure to both:

• have the Lamp-cats win
• Survey the terrain with the Youthful Naturalist 3 times successfully at Low tide. This is a 8 challenge, and all three successes are needed within one cycle (you lose your progress at the end of the cycle). That gives seven attempts (58% probability of success at 7).

With this done, you can Conduct an experiment. Finishing this and the subsequent actions will set to 141-143, as well as affecting your naturalist qualities. The Fruits of Science will give you your first special reward, and you will now have a choice. Either you may do an operation, which may cost some second chances if you threw the naturalist overboard in part 1, or you may decline to do so. Lending your assistance costs and , and leads to a hard challenge (16, but decreases on failures) which may be completely avoided if you have . Declining means you'll have to do another cycle of the Port Cecil carousel.

Speak to the Naturalist another time and your will reach 170. Head back to in London to conclude this part of Evolution, increasing to 175.

Part 4 - The Journey

Covers 175 - 320

Required items and hard challenges:

• 
• 
• 

Once again, you'll draw an opportunity card in London. This time playing the card will cost a lot of candles. Upon paying the candles, a meeting will ensue, in the process granting you an . You will also gain a small reward, and be requested to zail to again. Before you reach Port Cecil you will be ambushed, and if your isn't very high, you may experience some Nightmares.

Once you've reached Port Cecil, you should use your essence in order to revive the naturalist. As the Bishop requested, you should head to , in Godfall, but in order to get the naturalist with you, you'll need a . Your should now be at 200.

In order to actually zail to , you'll first need to discover Godfall. Refer to Pilgrimages in Godfall (Guide) for this. If you haven't already unlocked pilgrimages, this would also be a good time to do so. Talk to the abbot-commander, and have the naturalist wrestle him. The Wax-wind will return, and you will experience a different pilgrimage carousel than usual, as you will have to battle with the wax-wind for each station, and you will have the naturalist perform rituals instead of yourself. At Associating 270, you will have a surprise, and gain a and . By the end of your journey, associating should reach 320.

Back in London, there will be a universal storylet setting Associating to 325, marking the end of this section.

Part 5 - The Pirates

Covers 325-474

Required qualities, items and hard challenges:

• Access to (Requires Base 5)
• (See Piracy (Guide) for how to gain this)
• 
• s
• (not consumed) OR s
• 

At 325 you may Report to the Dilmun Club. This starts another meeting, setting to 330 . You will also start drawing Making Contact with a Contact which allows you to increase up to 3 (this takes 3 successes). A storylet in , coil 2 will increase this further up to 4. With both the meeting done and having tracked down the Charwoman, you may Prepare to continue your research. After having done all these steps, it's time to return to . Upon approaching , a storylet will autofire with options depending on , changing what you see as you approach . Upon arriving at , you should follow the storylets on Blood and Feathers until you have 365.

To progress further you will need to do another pilgrimage and Interrogate the Rowdy Corsair when the option appears. This will set your progress to 370, at which point you'll need access to in order to progress. Once there, you'll need to obtain the assistance of the Rowdy Corsair's crew. After paying them in , supplying them with maps, and doing a bit of planning, you'll be able to Hear the name of the Delight from your and pursue it as a Bounty. After you track it down, by donning your as a disguise and using a Whirring Contraption's parts for a cage, you'll be allowed to board.

Aboard the Delight, will change the appearance of everything; without it, you may receive from the ambient horrors around you. If your get too high a storylet will autofire prompting you to equip your mask, removing all . There are three floors, and you need to spend one action on each floor passing time to unlock an action that grants a . Once you have 3 , you can Enter the Second Sacristan's cabin on the middle deck to rescue the Youthful Naturalist, the conclusion of which will see you become affiliated with . Then, after catching up with the Youthful Naturalist, return to London to end the chapter.

Part 6 - The Garden and the Diving-Bell

Covers 475-625

Required qualities, items and hard challenges:

• 
• 
• Several items that are also gathered in the chapter
• 3 (fairly easy) challenges
• 7 7 challenges, some of which can be bypassed with the following qualities and items:
  • 
  • 
  • 
  • profession with the specialisation
  • profession with the specialisation
• 7 challenge
• No

Just like the other chapters this chapter starts with a meeting. This time you will be tasked with killing the shell you just provided in order to get hold of it once again. After navigating the meeting room and passing some checks, you will gain either the or the . Talk to the Naturalist on your ship in order to continue from here. You get tasked to gather some comprehension in order to make your Diving bell. This requires visiting , , ( card) and 2 x (card requiring some ).

Having gathered said comprehension and items, prepare to build the diving-bell and zail to in order to continue the trek. (Bring or your trip will be wasted.) Having assembled the diving-bell, you will have to chart the currents in the 7 seas by equipping your shell and drawing cards in the different zee-regions.

Once all of the regions were mapped, the player can talk to the Naturalist to finalize the construction, and then, the player can draw one card to use the diving bell. The card is drawn while the shell is equipped, and can be drawn in any sea region. The player cannot have any while diving, but having other menaces (and equipping menace-boosting equipment) will prevent some menace gain. After diving and resurfacing another meeting with the Dilmun Club begins, including an increase to a naturalist quality. Ending the meeting concludes Part 6.

Part 7 - Irem

Covers 630+

Required qualities, items and hard challenges:

• 
• 

Recommended, in order to gain Zeefaring Ztudies 2:

• 
• 
• , , and
• 
• Base 6

Once again, this chapter starts with a meeting in London: Fresh from Blackfinger Street. After finishing the meeting you will be tasked to do the final leg of the journey - travelling to . This requires spending honey and a Zee Lane. Having made an Iremi Zee-Chart, you should zail to Irem. Bringing the recommended items will make it easier to clear at Irem and will allow you to gain Zeefaring Ztudies 2 in the process (This can be done in The House of Snow and Brine).

In Irem, you will exchange your tentacle keys from the previous steps for increased understanding of the Crossroads and unlock the Destiny of the Youthful Naturalist. Proceeding will put you in a weave between 4 different areas: , , and . Each location has 3 different cards, in addition to menace cards from Nightmares and Wounds. The cards will earn you three qualities: , or . They allow you to move to one of the other futures, depending on the Warp colour. The same Warp will always move you to the same future (see table below), unless you are already there, in which case you will be moved back to A Forking Future.

The starting location has access to all 3 Warps, but this isn't true for all of them! The cards have different borders according to which types of Warps they give:

Quality	Border	Described Colour	Found in which futures?	Destination
		Silver	Forking, Vivisected, Mortal	Mortal or Forking
		Dark green with red spots	Forking, Manifold, Vivisected	Vivisected or Forking
		Dark green	Forking, Manifold, Mortal	Manifold or Forking
Item Card		Gold	Mortal	N/A

In order to proceed you need to visit each of the futures at least once, unlocking three comprehension qualities. This is done by using cards to gain warps and the loom storylet for navigation. Whenever you enter a new future you lose any warps you may have, but your cards remain. In addition to this, you will need to raise one of your naturalist qualities to 7, while keeping the others below 7.

Each card has one option to adjust your naturalist qualities, but the quality you want might be more accessible in a different future.

Since each card only has one option for changing the qualities, the below table contains the card name and not the action name.

Card	Found in Which Future?	Acceptance	Malleability	Cunning
	Forking	+2 CP	+2 CP	+2 CP
	Forking	-	+3 CP	+3 CP
	Forking	+3 CP	+3 CP	-
	Mortal	+5 CP	-3 CP
	Mortal	+5 CP	-	-3 CP
	Mortal	+4 CP	-	+3 CP
	Vivisected	-3 CP	+3 CP
	Vivisected	-	+3 CP	-3 CP
	Vivisected	-2 CP	+4 CP	-
	Manifold	-	-3 CP	+4 CP
	Manifold	-4 CP		+3 CP
Unravelling	Manifold	-	+3 CP	+3 CP

The different naturalist qualities lead to different destinies for the naturalist:

• (Malleablility)
• (Acceptance)
• The Hanged Man (Cunning)

Regardless of your choice, choosing a destiny will end the storyline and unlock advanced destinies, but there are also a storylet and a card back in London. See Irem (Guide) for a more in-depth guide to the advanced destinies. Based on your choice, one of the members of the Dilmun Club will give you a reward on Another File for the Archives An item worth 312.5 , as well as connections with the relevant faction(s). Additionally, you will (eventually) draw A dream about jellyfish giving a

Other effects:

• An extra option on ...or you could just give up
• The Seekers of the Garden card gets an extra branch, useful for gaining favours.
• : A slight dialogue change when talking to the boatman.

This concludes the story of the Youthful Naturalist.

Rewards

Table shows unique items from the storyline

Part: Item Name	Item type	Stats/Uses
Part 3:	Home Comfort	Watchful +4 Respectable -3 Monstrous Anatomy +1
Part 4:	Hat	Dangerous +5 Dreaded +1 Delighted +1 Wearing the mask while unlocks special dream cards
Part 5: The Crew of the HMS Ramillies	Affiliation	Dangerous +4 Dreaded +2 Zeefaring +1 Unlocks slightly easier options on two Zailing cards, one with piracy and one in the Snares (Snares, Piracy)
Part 6: or	Clothing	Bizarre +2 Kataleptic Toxicology +1 Monstrous Anatomy +1 Spiralling Regrets +1
Part 7: Access to advanced destinies and Irem	See Irem (Guide)