This day I have begun the single longest undertaking a person can take. Hesperidean Cider.
Tell me, has anyone started upon this course? How far did they get?
I plan to find the most unique of souls in those young writers called by the Mottled Men, and harvest them for myself. It is far better that someone who understands the value of these poor, doomed people make some use of them than they disappear forever. Any further advice, or material aid would be much appreciated, though I hope to have the stamina to last all the way through without, if needbe.
Edit: Some quick numbers massaging says this should take roughly 68500 actions using roughly 24000 Tales of Terror, plus the input needed to get all the consumed resources (which may come out to quite a time investment in and of itself). Can someone sanity check this?
Second Edit: As I have the current last post, I’ll update here instead, with the information that I now have 720 Sense of Deja Vu, roughly half the amount needed for an attempt at getting an overgoat (which hilariously seems to be 1337). Only 17280 to go! (Actually, less as I already have three of the coruscating souls out of the 512 required, saving me roughly 140 Tales of Terror plus conversions actions and items that go with them.)
Third Edit: I’m closing in on 1800 Sense of Deja Vu, 1/10 the total goal. When I reach that milestone I will do a run of conversions all the way to Coruscating Souls, posting the data here as well as providing it to Vyrlokar for inclusion in his spreadsheet tracking percentages of success for each portion of the story. edited by Malarthi on 6/11/2012 edited by Malarthi on 8/17/2012
As nearly as I can tell no one outside the development team has Hesperidean Cider. Mr. Arendt has it on his mantelpiece if I’m not terribly mistaken.
Let’s presume your calculations are correct and you do, indeed, need 68500 actions using roughly 24000 Tales of Terror. This does not take into account the number of Correspondence Plaques, Brilliants Souls, Indentities Uncovered, Mysteries of the Elder Continent or Mourning Candels. The best source of ToT I can find is in the Flit. 25 for 32cp. It would take 920 actions to push the button to collect them(24000/25) and 8549 actions to collect the cp to push that button(92032+55=29495. 29495/18=1638.65=8194 when rounded up)
That’s 9114 actions on top of your 68500 for a total of 77614 actions.
Now let’s presume you are going to utilize every action available in a waking day(16 hours) which should come out to about 106 actions a day with refresh(16*60/10+10)
That should take you 732 days and change, or just over two years to complete. Better get after it. Good luck.
EDITED for math. edited by Nigel Overstreet on 5/3/2012
I, perhaps overoptimistically, always figured that once the stats caps were lifted again (and the relickers suggest that at some point, the caps will be lifted, otherwise they are just torturing me with the wares that I shall never ever ever receive even with thousands of scraps), the rewards would increase as well, giving us all a chance to earn the Cider.
But a head start is always good! Plus, if Nigel’s stats are correct, those of us who can’t spend 16 hours playing the game had best start hopping to it anyway. Once we have Overgoats, that is.
I will admit to toying with the new Ambition content (partially in hopes of a faster means of acquiring wealth).
I have not been entirely disappointed. The Fidgeting Writer requires a great deal of Mourning Candles. At 13 Phosphorescent Scarabs per action, the new Light Fingers content appears to offer a superior way to grind Luminosity items that aren’t Beeswax.(As a comparison, you’d need 3.25 echos per action to buy scarabs as quickly, or to get ~123.8 beeswax per action to convert them as quickly in lots of 1000 wax, assuming the extra action is negated by the addition of possible lucky and rare successes because I’m lazy.)
If you’re heading out that way anyway, bring a net. And some coffee.
Apologies for the double post: this is big enough that an edit doesn’t feel like it suffices.
I’m currently farming Connected: Revolutionaries to get the statistics needed to convert 31750 Phosphorescent Scarabs into 6350 Memories of Light which then convert into 1270 Mourning Candles, to produce the required ~633 Coruscating Souls that will be the end result of my efforts. Converting 50 Phosphorescent Scarabs into 10 Memories of Light costs 2 points Connected: Revolutionaries. Doing this 5 times gets you the 50 Memories of Light to convert into 10 Mourning Candles, costing 10 Connected: Revolutionaries. Ergo it costs 2 Connected: Revolutionaries cp per Mourning Candle using this method, with chances to acquire Inklings of Identity (which can go toward creating farming Rumour items for Identities
Uncovered required for the fifth Fidgeting Writer step) and Favour in High Places, which can be straight out sold for 12.5 echos each, defraying costs for materials or counting as part of a Courscating Soul sale. This method would require 762 turns to convert the Scarabs into Mourning Candles, and 2540 Connected: Revolutionaries cp - approximately level 75.8 - and would require an additional 508 turns to farm the required level of Connected: Revolutionaries using a Ridiculous Hat at the races. As I mentioned in a post below, the fastest way I’ve found to get Scarabs is 13/action, requiring an additional 2445 actions to get 31785 Scarabs for converting.
Alternatively it’s entirely possible to convert 500 Phosphorescent Scarabs into 105 Memories of light, costing zero Connected: Revolutionaries cp. This halves the Connected farm time to 254 turns for 1270 cp (Just over level 50) required for the Mourning Candles. It also decreases Scarabs required to just 30500 and the conversion time to 61 turns. This is a savings of 1250 Scarabs and 701 turns of conversion, 254 turns on Connected: Farming and ~100 turns on Scarab farming. Can you think of something better to do with 1055 turns? I sure can! Assuming a 1% chance of a rare success on 50->10 Scarab->MoL conversion, I’d get just 0.125 echos per action from selling my seven Favour in High Places. I can do better just grinding any of the PoSI storylets in the starter areas. 8 times better, at least.
The percentage of successes that would grant me 4 Inklings of Identity would be the only unknown (and possible wrinkle) in all of this, coupled with a lack of knowledge as to exactly how many actions a loop through the Foreign Office would be to get 450 Proscribed Materials. If there’s a 90% success rate on Scarabs->MoL and nothing more than 8 or 9 Proscribed Materials per action, then it’d actually be worthwhile to spend the extra actions essentially farming Inklings of Identity while simultaneously converting Scarabs to Memories of Light. Otherwise, I’m probably much better off farming Proscribed Materials, or looking higher up the chain. In particular, Vision of the Surfaces are just two Tier Three conversions from becoming Incendiary Gossips, which convert directly into Identities Uncovered. Romantic Notions come from Polythyreme and are acquirable 12/action - slightly worse than Phosphorescent Scarabs, but the extra conversion steps make it decidedly not worthwhile. Assuming teleporting to Polythyreme, you can get 2.46 Visions of the Surface per action. These can then be cross converted to Mysteries of the Elder Continent at a 50:51 ratio for an action, giving a rate of 2.49 Mysteries of the Elder Continent per action (assuming 315 VotS * (51/50 MotEC/VotS exchange) / (125 actions farming + 3 mass conversions + 1 cross conversion)). Another cross conversion gives us 2.52 per Incendiary Gossip action, and from there six conversions (leaving some Gossip behind) nets 60 Identities Uncovered, roughly 4/9ths of an Identity Uncovered per action without accounting for the excess waste.
Does anyone have a better idea? Do all these numbers look sound? Am I really going to spend 11390 actions farming Identities Uncovered?
It is unlikely that gaining Scarabs or Memories of Light will become any easier, for doing so would greatly alter the economics of Doubt Street. I suspect converting your Scarabs to Memories in bulk is the best option.
You are also presuming a 50% success rate on conversion of Mourning Candles. While this may be accurate at larger numbers, unfortunately your pool is simply too small to guarantee that level of success. You should allow for greater variance should your luck be poor.
Your numbers are not entirely unsound. What you are attempting to do is a daunting task that will likely take about three years of pure grinding. Given that you will surely be pursuing other content when it is released, this is likely to be longer. If you insist on pursuing this there are a few things you should consider. Firstly, that others have been playing this game for upwards of three years and so may have a bit of a start on you in terms of Echo grinding so you may not be the first non-developer to get Hesperidian Cider. Secondly, that there may be another way to garner Hesperidian Cider during later content. Thirdly, Hesperidan Cider may not do anything at all. It may have no content associated with it and may just be a thing to put on your mantelpiece. And you won’t even be the only one with it; merely the only non-developer with it. And lastly, that you may find after a year or so of pure button pushing that your resolve will waver and this really fun, entertaining and engaging game has become little more than a massive time suck you grow to hate.
You have been warned. Good luck.
It occurs to me that if you are Involved in the Soul Trade, their is an option to get a hold of Mourning Candles through the “Someone is Coming” storylet.
I believe every “Someone is Coming” action(and they are a dime a dozen) creates 1cp of the Quality and trading it in for Mourning Candels grants 4 for 21cp. This means that you can get 4 Candles for every 22 actions as long as you are willing to wait for the card, which isn’t uncommon.
So 1270 Candles should take you 6985 actions to attain and would need to pull about 318 “Someone is Coming” cards. In addition you would get all of the additional Connections and items that come with things like Quirk cards and exchanging Connections. While 318 cards to pull seems like a lot, remember that you will be doing this over the course of years so you’ve got plenty of time.
I’m not aiming to be the first, merely to accomplish the goal. It may take me three years, it may take me four. It may be I never taste the Cider. But it’s worth trying. And if nothing else, it forces me to investigate interesting portions of Fallen London I would otherwise have ignored, hopefully contributing to the general pool of useful knowledge.
To be honest buy the time you got to half of what you needed there will probably be a way easier way to get the cider. I mean the games supposed to have an ending eventually. Plus when the stats get to 200 I bet we will all be getting like a hundred echoes an action.
Highly unlikely, actually. Pence rewards from storylets tend to be about equal to the level of the quality necessary to reach a “modest” level in the challenge. So we would probably be getting about two echoes an action.
But yes, as the game goes on, there will doubtlessly be better grinding methods available, and I suspect that there may be some special windfall in the late game (possibly as the conclusion to our Ambitions?) that will give us the money to buy the Cider.
Perhaps at an 80% discount or somesuch. In which case, being even partially prepared would be a huge asset, as a bargain price of 32,000 Echos is still ~3 overgoats.