Hi! I’m on an expedition, and I foolishly didn’t look at the requirements for messing with one of my rivals. I’m now one crate of expedition supplies short of what I need, and I’m wondering what my best bet for saving this trip is?
I know there’s an option that comes up when you have AotFQ 96 and up that gives you extra progress, but it seems I don’t have access to the options that normally change that quality while I’m on an expedition. Is there a way to change the quality where I am right now?
Your best bet is to take the slow option (A cautious approach) spending one supply and choosing the Vision storylets at AotFQ 11/22/33 if they appear to increase the number of opportunities for "A sign" to appear.
Personally, though, I’d just take the loss and try again. Failure is an important step in the learning process.
If you’re short 1 supply and on one of the longer expeditions with rivals, you’re increasing the risk of them catching up, so that you may crash and burn anyway.
Like everyone else here, I’ve had occasion to read the failure texts on expeditions, so biting the bullet and cutting your losses may well be the best option.
Some perspective: A Sign, having a 5% chance of appearing, will have about 65% chance of popping up within 20 actions, and you need about 45 tries to bump that to 90%. And, as mentioned above, if you’re spending that many actions you’re very likely to just run into your rival and then you’re pretty much certain to come up short.
Not to mention you can sometimes be seriously unlucky with the RNG. I had saved up the max number of supplies for my original Nadir run and used up all but four – with not a single sign on the whole dig.
Thank you to all who responded! I did end up cutting my losses, but returned and got through it with supplies to spare! My character is now, officially, a scholar of the correspondence.