So I’ve heard rumors that those who picked the fork during the fate-locked ‘A Trade in Souls’ story have access to a rather profitable grind. One that exceeds even the Boxful of Intrigues for epa! Stands to reason, really. The whole POINT of trading in souls is to make a profit, right?
Now, I AM a Spirifer. Have been for a long time. But I don’t see where this supposed grind is. All I’ve got access to is an occasional card that offers me a chance to sell my soul (which, I understand, USED to be extremely profitable… but isn’t anymore), and an ‘Infernal Fence’ that lets me trade normal souls for brass or Brilliant Souls.
Is it this fence that offers the profit? If so, which of his trade-in options is it, and what’s the most efficient way to obtain the souls to fuel it? And if not, what am I missing?
(Oh, and I hope this doesn’t constitute Fate-Content spoilers… 's got nothing to do with the actual content of that storyline, anyway. Feel free to tell me where to slap on the spoiler-tags, if it is. >_>;)
The 1000 Soul option gives 3000 Nevercold Brass Slivers and 2 Appalling Secrets. If you have a good source of Souls (I personally use Unfinished Business in Spite) you can make a pretty decent amount through the Fence.
It works out to about 1.73 EPA given average results if you use Unfinished Business, which I believe makes it the second-most competitive source of cash in the game, next to the War of Assassins/Tomb-Colonies card combo at 1.785 EPA.
Huh. That IS pretty impressive, though my stats aren’t quite high enough to use Unfinished Business reliably. But that’s definitely a good one to keep in mind once I get a bit higher. And just generally whenever I find myself with some souls to spare. >_> And to believe I’ve been staunchly ignoring that option all this time. “What, brass? Pshaw, like I need more of THAT junk. Gimme some Brilliant Souls!” :P
Excellent question. Also, I gotta ask if we’re certain that Unfinished Business IS the best possible source of souls around, or if there are any credible rivals. Of course, the answer to that would depend somewhat on the answer to the FIRST question…
Of course, now that I start thinking about it, I can’t actually think of any other reliable source of souls. Robbing the Brass Embassy? Maybe, since you get other stuff there too, but the need to take it to 100% to avoid really nasty repercussions for failure makes it unlikely to be efficient. Thieves’ Cache expeditions? Only award souls half the time. Of course, the other half you get glim, which you’d need to fuel future expeditions anyway… and you get an unpredictable treasure on top, which makes the results a whole lot more random. Hmm. edited by BlakeTheDrake on 6/24/2015
An implausible penance -> The Smuggler’s Grave -> One stone in a thousand -> 250 Soul in exchange for 55 CP Criminals.
Not the best once you can use Unfinished Business reliably, but if you were grinding shadowy by selling Casing you’d have a bit of Criminal connection leftover.
You can also harvest the royal beth, which gives some brilliant and a bunch of normal souls … iirc, that will be around 163 ppa? Unless I misremember the amounts.
[quote=Estelle Knoht]An implausible penance -> The Smuggler’s Grave -> One stone in a thousand -> 250 Soul in exchange for 55 CP Criminals.
Not the best once you can use Unfinished Business reliably, but if you were grinding shadowy by selling Casing you’d have a bit of Criminal connection leftover.[/quote]
With old bone skeleton key to replenish the criminal connection, it’s …
(3000-150455/75)/(1+4+3455/75)=185.5 ppa - not too bad!
(and as a bonus you max out a quirk)
@BlakeTheDrake - yes, the fence is the action in Ladybones Road. ("Hell’s Fence"->"A solid haul")
I’m actually really glad to see this thread show up, because I seem to have messed up with Criminals connection.
[spoiler] Not just because I’ve recently taken the Spirifer path myself, but because I’d heard there was a conflict card between Criminals/Constables that required 50 of each and gave a large amount of Connected: for a small amount of the opposing faction. So I’ve been casing the Flit for ages now, and my Connected:Criminals is at 46.
But when I went to comment here with what I was trying to do, I looked for the name of the Opportunity Card which had this action and it turns out I’d mis-read it - the card I was thinking of ("Crime or Punishment?") requires a large amount of Connected:Constables and gives a small amount of Connected:Criminals, plus some items. So, not exactly the profitable reputation gain I (somehow) thought it was. :-p
Looks like it’s time to wait for An Implausible Penance, to cash in all this Connected:Criminals! ^_^ [/spoiler]
[quote=Estelle Knoht]An implausible penance -> The Smuggler’s Grave -> One stone in a thousand -> 250 Soul in exchange for 55 CP Criminals.
Not the best once you can use Unfinished Business reliably, but if you were grinding shadowy by selling Casing you’d have a bit of Criminal connection leftover.[/quote]
I don’t remember the exact numbers, but if you get your Criminals connection from the connection item only this actually works out to be a bit better than unfinished business.
[quote=Kittenpox]@BlakeTheDrake - yes, the fence is the action in Ladybones Road. ("Hell’s Fence"->"A solid haul")
I’m actually really glad to see this thread show up, because I seem to have messed up with Criminals connection.
[spoiler] Not just because I’ve recently taken the Spirifer path myself, but because I’d heard there was a conflict card between Criminals/Constables that required 50 of each and gave a large amount of Connected: for a small amount of the opposing faction. So I’ve been casing the Flit for ages now, and my Connected:Criminals is at 46.
But when I went to comment here with what I was trying to do, I looked for the name of the Opportunity Card which had this action and it turns out I’d mis-read it - the card I was thinking of ("Crime or Punishment?") requires a large amount of Connected:Constables and gives a small amount of Connected:Criminals, plus some items. So, not exactly the profitable reputation gain I (somehow) thought it was. :-p
Looks like it’s time to wait for An Implausible Penance, to cash in all this Connected:Criminals! ^_^ [/spoiler][/quote]
Unless you really need the Diamonds, I wouldn’t waste your Connected: Criminals on An Implausible Penance. In my view it is the hardest connection apart from Masters to raise significantly (once you get past 50), and therefore I wouldn’t recommend that you see it as a source of cash.
Yeah, but it’s card dependent and you’d be giving up a 3 scrap per action option. If that sort of thing is important to you.
The same goes for using Implausible Penance to get souls; it’s card dependent and thus, not really an applicable "grind."
Unfinished Business is only way to eat up a bunch of actions in a row, and that’s only really profitable if it’s 60 souls per action instead of the usual 50.
Hell’s Fence is a good source of Echoes, but I don’t know if it’s really a good source to grind, yet. edited by Nigel Overstreet on 6/26/2015
Scraps are important to me, but once Gloria has enough to afford every high tier Relicker item I can willingly give up 3 Scraps for a nice profitable action I can play now and then. Not a true grind, no, but a nice extra every now and then adds up over time.
Is the Unfinished business in Spite option really the best way to get souls? Every time I try that I get an abysmal amount souls, I usually get really small amounts each action (Under 50 most of the time)
It’s based on your Shadowy, if I’m not mistaken. I’m starting to track the number of souls an alt with max Shadowy gets. I’ll report back here after I’ve recorded 1,000 results, then I’ll redo the experiment with Shadowy gear equipped to see if that makes a noticeable difference. Right now I’m only 39 results into it, with an average of 60.92 Souls per action.
Getting souls from that & trading 'em in 1000 at a time for brass got me most of my overgoat. Just don’t look at the numbers.
Really, don’t.
It’s 1-120, and when I was having serious doubts about the RNG hating me, and started measuring it (yeah, I know…) it suddenly started being 90+ for like 10 tries in a row.
If you’re doing anything grindy, it’ll even out. Eventually. Unless it’s the fidgeting writer thing. Don’t do that…
Slightly off topic, but I didn’t want to create a new thread to ask… I’m a recent arrival to the city (~20 stats), and a… friend of mine has asked for 50 (normal) souls. I’m not really sure how to acquire them, as I’m far from having the ‘unfinished business’ option. Any suggestions? edited by Kalil on 6/27/2015
[quote=Kalil]Slightly off topic, but I didn’t want to create a new thread to ask… I’m a recent arrival to the city (~20 stats), and a… friend of mine has asked for 50 (normal) souls. I’m not really sure how to acquire them, as I’m far from having the ‘unfinished business’ option. Any suggestions? edited by Kalil on 6/27/2015[/quote]
At Veilgarden:
Commission: Immortalise Jack-of-Smiles in a Penny Dreadful! -> They asked for it. They want blood? Give them blood!
You can get 12x Soul from it, although it will probably take quite many actions, but this one only requires 15 Persuasive.
There simply isn’t a efficient source of Souls until 50+ Watchful.