A Visitor's Guide to Tanah-Chook

Fallen London
1

TL;DR guarantees 1.80 £pa with optimal route.

Tanah-Chook, a new zailing destination in this month’s exceptional story (&quotAll Things Must End&quot), is a strange nonlinear sort of carousel. Each day allows for six daytime actions, at 0900, 1100, 1300, 1500, 1700, and 1900. After the 1900 action, another action must be spent to rest until 0900 the next day. Daytime actions can be divided into four categories. Productive actions give 5 Ways of a Small Republic and 50 or 60 pence of minor items. Reward actions exchange 20 Ways of a Small Republic for £7.50 worth of mid-level items. Travel actions move the player from the Market to the House of Exertion or the Grand Library, or from the House or Library back to the Market. Wait actions give 2 Ways of a Small Republic and -1 cp of one menace.

There are Productive, Travel, and Wait options available at all times in each location. Over the course of the day the rewards of the Productive options change in each location, although the value of the reward is always 50p with the sole exception of &quotAttend a tea sampling&quot in the Great Library at 1500 or 1700, which pays out 4 Appalling Secrets for a value of 60p.

Reward options, however, are only available at specific times in each location. At 0900 or 1100 in the House of Exertion the reward is 2 Vision of the Surface and 3 Mourning Candle. At 1500 in the Market the reward is 2 Tale of Terror and 3 Identity Uncovered. At 1900 in the Great Library the reward is 2 Memory of Light and 3 Extraordinary Implication. In each case the total value of the payout is £8.50. Ending a day in the Market allows the player to reach up to three Reward opportunities the next day, ending a day in the Great Library allows only two, and ending a day in the House of Exertion allows the player to access all four if they’ve built up enough Ways.

The best route is the one which wastes the fewest actions, so minimizing travel is key. The House of Exertion gives us the most chances to cash in without traveling, so let’s try spending our entire visit there.

Day 1: Travel to the House of Exertion, and spend the rest of the day on Productive actions. That first travel action, along with the action to begin the carousel, don’t need to be repeated, so they won’t be part of £pa calculations (kudos to Optimatum for pointing this out). After 6 actions we have 25 Ways.

Day 2: Cash in 20 Ways, then back to being Productive. Now 13 actions, 30 Ways.

Day 3: Cash in 20 Ways, then get Productive. Now 20 actions, 35 Ways.

Day 4: Cash in 20 Ways, then get Productive. Now 27 actions, 40 Ways.

Day 5: Cash in 40 Ways, and four Productive actions this time. Now 34 actions, 20 Ways.

Day 6: Cash in 20 Ways. If we kept going we’d end the day with 25 Ways, looping us back to day 2, so this is a good time to stop and calculate £pa.

We’ve spent 35 actions in total; 24 Productive, 6 Reward, and 5 sleeping. From 24 actions at 50p each and 6 actions at 850p each, we’ve earned exactly 63 Echoes. That averages to £1.80 per action.

Above pretty much all of the London grinds, including Affair of the Box, but players in Tanah-Chook can’t use social actions or draw opportunity cards. Port Carnelian and Polythreme can yield greater £pa, but Tanah-Chook is perfectly reliable. Polythreme is heavily luck-based, and Port Carnelian involves some chance in the skill tests and the Airs randomizer.

Along with a £1.80£pa grind which runs like clockwork, Tanah-Chook offers easy reduction of Nightmares, Wounds, and Scandal by waiting in respectively the Market, House of Exertion, or Great Library. Since each action spent waiting gives 2 Ways along with -1 menace cp, they’re most efficient in bundles of five. It’s not action-efficient compared to options in London, but it’s worth taking advantage of while you’re there. Players who reached Nightmares, Wounds, or Scandal 8 while at zee could make an emergency stop in Tanah-Chook instead of returning to London and being sent immediately to the slow boat, mirror-marches, or tomb-colonies.
edited by Anchovies on 7/12/2017
edited by Anchovies on 7/15/2017

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At least I commented here before the real Tanah-Chook.

You really did your homework.
edited by Tystefy on 7/12/2017

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That’s not entirely accurate. Last time I checked the spirifage grind is a fraction of a penny shy of 1.75 EPA and that’s more than made up for through cards, professional payments, etc.

That said, excellent work on the math! I wonder if, given its EPA, Tanah-Chook might be an efficient source of the various reward items…

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Thanks for the analysis!

5

It is SO CONFUSING seeing my name used so often without it being addressed to me.

6

So, let me get my head round this. Optimun grind is simply:

Step 1: Head to Teneth Chook
Step 2:Head to house of exertion.
Step 3: Use actions that give Ways, then cash them in when you can?
Step 4: repeat/Profit?

7

Pretty much. Since you have to zail there and back, your EPA goes up the longer you spend doing it.

I’m more excited to have a reliable way to clear menaces before returning to London. Rarely needed but handy in a pinch.

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On second thought, this math doesn’t seem quite right. Given that we’re trying to minimize travel and only do so once, we shouldn’t be counting Day 1 at all for the math. Really, it should be something like this:

Day 0: Travel to the House of Exertion, then do 5 Productive actions, starting us with 25 Ways. This is the setup day and isn’t included in the math.

Day 1: Cash in 20 Ways, then 5 Productive actions. Now 7 actions, 30 Ways.

Day 2: Cash in 20 Ways, then 5 Productive actions. Now 14 actions, 35 Ways.

Day 3: Cash in 20 Ways, then 5 Productive actions. Now 21 actions, 40 Ways.

Day 4: Cash in 40 Ways plus 4 Productive actions today. Now 28 actions, 20 Ways.

Day 5: Cash in 20 Ways, then 5 Productive actions. Now 35 actions, back to 25 Ways.

We’ve spent 35 actions in this loop; 24 Productive, 6 Reward, and 5 Sleeping. Those 24 x 0.5 E and 6 x 8.5 E actions give us 63 Echoes, at 1.80 EPA.
edited by Optimatum on 7/13/2017

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[quote=Optimatum]That said, excellent work on the math! I wonder if, given its EPA, Tanah-Chook might be an efficient source of the various reward items…[/quote]It is interesting to note that most of the materials required for the Fidgeting Writer grind can be obtained through these cash-ins. I wonder if it might be effective to begin in the Great Library, building up Ways while using the more profitable Tea Sampling option, then shifting to the Market and the House of Exertion to obtain suitable quantities of each reward in turn. Of course, one would have to stay there a while to make up for the actions sunk into getting to and from Tanah-Chook, as with any overzee grind.

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At 1.80EPA I think that’s just a penny shy of the Collection of Curiosities grind. For an entirely luck-free grind, that’s actually pretty nice (though personally I haven’t had a lot of trouble drawing the tomb-colonies card).

I haven’t gotten around to zailing there yet (busy grinding romantic notions in Polythreme - oh how I loathe Polythreme), so can I ask how far away is it from London?

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In the interests of investigation, I paid my own visit to Tanah-Chook and took some notes on what the different Productive actions generate. The Market, while less able to generate a high profit than the House, has more useful Productive outputs, at least from the standpoint of gaining materials for the Fidgeting Writer, so I drew up a Market-focused grind to see how efficient I could make that. The basic outline is a five day cycle where most days (after a prep day) are spent doing five Productive actions and one Reward action, but on the third day you travel to the House of Exertion before your last Productive action of the day, sleep, then open Day Four with two Reward actions before traveling back to the Market. This brings the EPA down to 1.7 due to the additional travel actions, however, the five day cycle gives you the following:

16 Tales of Terror
4 Visions of the Surface
4 Journals of Infamy
6 Memories of Distant Shores
25 Inklings of Identity
12 Identities Uncovered
6 Mourning Candles
50 Lamplight Beeswax.
When you factor out the material ratios assuming all of the Tales get used for Fidgeting, this provides you almost exactly the correct number of Identities and more Mourning Candles than needed, and if you mass up convert the Inklings and side convert the resulting Gossip along with the Memories, you get about the right number of Brilliant Souls. The Journals of Infamy can either be up-converted to Extraordinary Implications or side-converted to Plaques, but in any event you’d need an additional source of Visions, Plaques, and Implications to round out what you need (maybe alternating cycles between House and Library? If you time it right, you can get two reward actions out of the Library instead and get the Implications, at least). I’m not well-versed enough in the normal supply lines for Fidgeting Writer to know how much of an improvement this is, or whether the overall profit is enough to make it preferable to the House of Exertion grind, but the prospect is intriguing.

@Dudebro Pyro Tanah-Chook is exactly as far away as any other destination in the Southern Archipelago, meaning you need Approaching… 10 to get there.

Edit: Brainwave. I took another look at the timetable and realized that I was passing up an opportunity for four consecutive reward actions. Each window of opportunity for a reward action is 2:59 long, but since the Reward action windows in the Market and Library start on even-numbered hours, you can’t take advantage of them twice unless you fit in a one hour action to move you onto the even-numbered track. So, if you start the day in the House of Exertion with sufficient Ways, you can do two Reward actions there (0900-1100, 1100-1300), travel back to the Market (1300-1400), then do two Reward actions in the Market (1400-1600, 1600-1800). This requires several more days of five Productive one Reward actions and lengthens the cycle out to fifteen days, but it brings the EPA up to ~1.76. A fifteen day cycle involving the Library has slightly different timing, but ends up with the same distribution of actions overall, giving it the same EPA. If your ultimate goal is Fidgeting, this sprinkles in some Extraordinary Implications, but causes Visions to fall further behind. I’ll have to complete my calculations on that front later, though.
edited by Kaigen on 7/15/2017

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At least it is not named &quotSir&quot or &quotFrederick&quot or &quotFreddy&quot.

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I’m glad people are finding this useful, and all the feedback is appreciated as well.

[quote=Kylestien]So, let me get my head round this. Optimun grind is simply:

Step 1: Head to Teneth Chook
Step 2:Head to house of exertion.
Step 3: Use actions that give Ways, then cash them in when you can?
Step 4: repeat/Profit?[/quote]Very roughly speaking, yes. Grinding Ways in the Library or Market while claiming rewards as often as possible will result in a growing pile of surplus Ways, while the second daily reward opportunity at the House of Exertion allows for that pile to be exhausted every fifth day.

The House of Exertion is also noteworthy for providing Mourning Candles, which IIRC are tricky to acquire in large volumes. Might this be the best Mourning Candle grind in the game?

[quote=Optimatum]On second thought, this math doesn’t seem quite right. Given that we’re trying to minimize travel and only do so once, we shouldn’t be counting Day 1 at all for the math.[/quote]You are correct. I was looking at the grind as a five-day grind offset by 1 action (i.e. starts and ends at 1100 rather than 0900), but mistakenly counted that first travel action at 0900 in the £pa calculation. Since it only occurs once per trip, it’s more properly counted in the cost of traveling to and from Tanah-Chook. I shall adjust the OP accordingly. Thank you!

[quote=Kaigen]since the Reward action windows in the Market and Library start on even-numbered hours, you can’t take advantage of them twice unless you fit in a one hour action to move you onto the even-numbered track.[/quote]Excuse me? Some of the actions - traveling, apparently - only take one hour? If true, this changes things. Can anyone currently in Tanah-Chook confirm this?

&quotA Visitor’s Guide to YOU&quot

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It’s certainly better than AotB in EPA, but by my math you get less Mourning Candle per action. Plus you don’t have access to the London deck while grinding here.

BTW you didn’t update the EPA at the beginning and end of the OP.

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I’m in Tanah-Chook right now. Traveling and waiting both only take an hour. Which means if you want some inefficient menace recover, you can fit one wait action into any non-travel day without losing any opportunities for Ways or Rewards.

Something that just occurred to me: there aren’t any skill checks in Tanah-Chook. You still need a ship to get there, but this could be a big deal for fresh PoSIs who are feeling a money crunch but haven’t unlocked the better London grinds yet. Downside is you can’t recover from Nadir stat loss while doing it.

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Heists are much more accessible and also still pretty lucrative even without optimized equipment. It’s an option, but it’s not obviously one that people should leap for.

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[quote=Tyrconnell]Heists are much more accessible and also still pretty lucrative even without optimized equipment. It’s an option, but it’s not obviously one that people should leap for.[/quote]True, and heists can be used to refill the opportunity deck more rapidly, which allows you to benefit even more from the London deck in between jobs. That said, heists are still luck-based, and while it is rare for a prepared player to fail a heist entirely, bad luck can force you to devote more actions and decrease the profitability. The nice thing about Tanah-Chook is that it’s as steady and reliable as the box grind while pulling down good income for something repeatable.

A summary of my findings thus far: As Anchovies notes, the House of Exertion is the best single location grind and comes in at 1.8 epa. However your productive action gains are all T1 items, most of which are not particularly useful. The Library and the Market can also host single location grinds on a similar five day cycle, but you have to periodically use a Wait action to enable a double-reward day, which cuts into the epa slightly (though at least you get some menace recovery if you need it).

The Library is the second-best single location grind at 1.78 epa, partly because one of its productive actions gives out 4 Appalling Secrets for 0.6 echoes instead of the usual 0.5, but also because in addition to the Appalling Secrets, you can get Relics of the Third City from one of the productive actions, and both of those productive actions can be doubled up on, meaning you get 8/10 per day and can save them up for mass conversion later. Also, the Library gives out Extraordinary Implications from its Reward action, which may be useful for those who need to manufacture Searing Enigmas in quantity.

The Market is the worst single location grind at 1.75 epa, but it provides potentially the most useful outputs. The Productive actions can give Tales of Terror, Journals of Infamy, or Memories of Distant Shores, all of which can be useful in their own right or side-converted into something that is.

After doing some more number crunching on the subject of supplying the Fidgeting Writer grind, I came to the conclusion that the dual location Market/Library grind is the best way to go, as getting those Implications saves you more trouble than getting the Visions of the Surface or Mourning Candles from the House of Exertion. Prioritizing the Market action which gives you Journals of Infamy over the action that gives Tales of Terror is necessary to balance the ratios, and you’ll still need to steal a lot of Journals and do a little box grinding in London to fill in the gaps. Still, this looks like a very efficient means to get most of the materials you need for the Fidgeting Writer grind, and in conjunction with selling off excess Identities Uncovered, could provide an epa as high as 1.87. Of course, that assumes a rolling situation where the all the products of every conversion are eventually used and doesn’t take into account the Zee trip to and from Tanah-Chook.

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[quote=Anchovies]

<snip>

&quotA Visitor’s Guide to YOU&quot[/quote]

Nah, I’m sure that Sir Fred is worth a lot more than 1.8 Echoes. :)
edited by cathyr19355 on 7/16/2017

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I’ve been thinking about this grind recently, and I think that we can do better than 1.80 EPA. We decided to only spend time in the House of Exertion to minimize travel, preventing use of the Library’s better Productive option, but with a long enough grinding period the one-time travel cost becomes irrelevant. As such, we get:

Four days at Library: 3 Productive actions, 2 Productive+ actions, 1 Reward action, 1 rest action. Net: +20 Ways, 44.8 E
One day at House of Exertion: 4 Productive actions, 2 Reward actions, 1 rest action. Net: -20 Ways, 19 E

In total this comes out to 1.82 EPA. Basically just spend a while at the Library for access to the better Productive option at 1500 and 1700, and use the Reward option at 1900. This will slowly build up excess Ways, so whenever you want to wrap up grinding, move over to the House of Exertion to do two-Reward days until you’ve used all your Ways. The higher profit outweighs the two actions to travel once you spend over 144 actions at the Library.

[quote=Anchovies]Reward actions exchange 20 Ways of a Small Republic for £7.50 worth of mid-level items.
[…]

Reward options, however, are only available at specific times in each location. At 0900 or 1100 in the House of Exertion the reward is 2 Vision of the Surface and 3 Mourning Candle. At 1500 in the Market the reward is 2 Tale of Terror and 3 Identity Uncovered. At 1900 in the Great Library the reward is 2 Memory of Light and 3 Extraordinary Implication. In each case the total value of the payout is £8.50.[/quote]

Something seems a little off here :P