Upon dying, choosing to Retire from Zeefaring Life, or otherwise permanently ending a captain's run, you will see a screen presenting the deceased captain's Legacy.
The choices which you select here will determine the starting advantages which your next captain will inherit.
In memoriam
This section of the Legacy screen commemorates the deceased captain and the Legacy Qualities this captain has unlocked.
Legacy Qualities
| Quality | Effects | Requirements | Location | Persistent? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transfer of the deceased captain's Lodgings and Heirlooms | Commissioned for 100 x Echo | Your Study in Your Lodgings in London | No | |
| The ability to choose two Legacy selections instead of being limited to one. | Raise A Child in London's Zee Fever to 25 | Time with your Family in Your Lodgings in London | Yes | |
| A +25 starting bonus to the new captain's Pages | Pass beyond the High Gate alongside the Merchant Venturer. This will end the game | The Venturer's Passage in Avid Horizon | Yes | |
| Raise Supremacy: The Dawn Machine to TRIUMPHANT (7) or greater. | The New Sequence in Fallen London | |||
| A +25 starting bonus to the new captain's Iron | Raise Supremacy: the Anarchists to 7. | Vienna (via the Cumaean Canal) | Yes | |
| Receive an Embassy with Khan's Shadow, and the Disillusioned Doctor is your Viceroy. | Your Colony at Aestival | |||
| Receive an Embassy with London from Your Colony | Your Colony at Aestival | |||
| A +25 starting bonus to the new captain's Mirrors | Hijack the Pentecost apes' zeppelin and fly east. This will end the game | Empire of Hands | Yes | |
| Receive an Embassy with the Presbyterate | Your Colony at Aestival | |||
| A +25 starting bonus to the new captain's Hearts | Bring the Scarred Sister to the Surface and pay her fare | Vienna (via the Cumaean Canal) | Yes | |
| Console the Austere Acolyte after discovering her secret | Station III | |||
| Receive an Embassy with the Khanate | Your Colony at Aestival | |||
| A +25 starting bonus to the new captain's Veils | Make a final Sphinxstone delivery to London without choosing a past | Fallen London, Salt Lions | Yes | |
| Receive an Embassy with no-one | Your Colony at Aestival | |||
| A +10 starting bonus to the new captain's Pages | Enter the embrace of Her Ladyship. This will end the game. | Fourth abyssal rite | Yes |
Warrant of Redemption
This section permits the actual selection of the Legacy (or legacies, if Scion has been unlocked), and will provide a summary of all of the starting advantages that your choices and accomplishments have conferred on the new captain.
- Rival: 50% of the deceased captain's Iron and one of their weapons.
- Pupil: 50% of the deceased captain's Mirrors and half of their Echoes.
- Salvager: 50% of the deceased captain's Veils and half of their Echoes.
- Shipmate: 50% of the deceased captain's Hearts and one of their Officers.
- Correspondent: 50% of the deceased captain's Pages and the entirety of their discovered chart.
The choice of inherited weapon or Officer for the Rival and Shipmate legacies is up to you. If you have two legacies, choosing both Pupil and Salvager will give you all your last captain's echoes. Weapons and Officers from quests can be inherited, but Officers from starting backgrounds cannot.
Rival is probably THE choice to make at the very beginning of your legacy (new game, early deaths). You are not likely to die with more that 1800 echoes in your pocket at that time and, your first 900 spending echoes can be carried over this way. In earlier versions of the game there was also an extremely good reason to grab your old Memento Mori, but nowadays its not as crucial.
There's a decent amount of Iron challenges in the early game, and the effect of iron on your damage is decent from the low levels as well.
Pupil & Salvager work best when you plan for them. If you like spending crazy amounts of time gaining crazy amount of money before retiring, and then going for the big ships from the start this is almost definitely THE choice for you. A more modest captain can get away with sticking to heirlooms and earning their wealth post-transfer. Even more so if you are not planning or not able to take them both.
This option also heavily depends on HOW things ended. A planned retirement means you had the chance to convert most of your assets into echoes, a unplanned end often means there's significantly less for you to transfer.
There's a good amount of mirrors challenges in the early game, however the effect of mirrors on your damage from the low levels is actually worse than that from iron. (works the other way around at 200+ but by that time it only matter how much stat points you carried over and not what kind of points those where).
Veils have the highest number of early game challenges and those are generally the most profitable ones to boot. And the primary effect of veils is also the most valuable one. On top of allowing you to avoid a fight you would rather not get into, it also gives you more time to shoot at targets that you actually want to fight. When it comes down to the choice of stats to transfer, veils is one of the two primary contenders, and due to various circumstances it usually is the one that comes out on top.
Shipmate is a special case. Most officers are not transfer-worthy, however The Satisfied Magician, definitely IS. Having him around allows you to purchase the serpentine from the get-go, and the fact that obtaining him is a once per captain gamble adds even more value to this transfer.
There's a decent amount of hearts challenges in the early game, though they are generally not very profitable. One random repeatable check however makes this arguably better starting stat than mirrors. Hearts have no direct effect on the game at all though.
Correspondent is the weird duck of the bunch. Having a chart strongly cuts down on your fragments gain in the early game, and some (if not most?) captains would in fact prefer to reset their chart regardless. Also having your old captains chart means having the exact same map configuration - the sectors will not shift at all.
There's a decent amount of pages checks in early game and most of them are geared towards gaining fragments, and if your early game is powered by enough heirlooms to afford a corvette then this check for 84 pages can easily compensate for whatever other stats you did not transfer. Pages direct effect on the game is relatively tame and it strongly depends on how often you opt for gaining fragments during events in the game. However pages are the most difficult stat to raise in this game both to 200 and beyond that. When it comes down to the choice of stats pages is the other primary contender. IF you can transfer a competitive amount of pages and are willing to deal with not having your chart reset then there's no competition here - as far as stats alone are concerned this would be the best choice possible. It's almost never is though.