An argument for doing heists

Over a long enough span of time, Thefts of Particular Character average out to 9 actions per Permit, since double hoodlums gives slightly more Casing than is consumed. A heist on B&F’s vault, on the other hand, will take somewhere in the neighborhood of 16 or 17 actions, depending on your luck an how much Inside Information you want to carry with you. So they’re about equivalent for speed, though if you’re really coming down to the wire and are comfortable with a higher level of risk, heists might get you there just a little bit faster. Of course, heists consume your opportunity cards and require constant attention for maximum efficiency (it’s like Polythreme all over again), while Thefts are a bit more forgiving. It’s also worth noting that being on a heist can interfere with your ability to receive social invitations; I’ve been grinding a lot of love stories recently and some of my acquaintances have begun to miss me.

4 cards is significantly better than 3 for a heist (and the only real reason I want a fifth!). For one, if you like to use it as a way of making waves, you need to have space to hold on to the Prize Achieved card without needing to risk the trickier spider and dog cards.

also consider the possibility of converting Love Stories to Bazaar Permits and otherwise profiting from the rather-not-rare rare success on that storyline.

And at the least, it’s fun.
edited by Parelle on 11/25/2015

[quote=Lundynne]I’ve been doing some maths lately, and I think heists are one of, if not the most efficient Epa carousel in the game.

If you use gang of hoodlums and the decoy, you can get 27 cp of casing in 8 actions, as well as a little prize, on average worth about 60p. then starting the heist and getting the inside information brings your total actions to 12. A perfect run would then take 16 actions, using both pieces of inside information on +2 cards, raising suspicion by 1 cp, and gaining 30.625E on average. Nicholas and Sons removes 5.5 cp of suspicion (on average) so you would only have to use it every 5 heists, making a perfect run take 16.2 actions. Addtionally, you can convert touching love stories to Bazaar permits, with a success of 200 cryptic clues (4E) or a rare success of a Fourth City Airag (62.5E). If you run the heist (perfectly) 100 times, you get enough love stories to convert to permits 24 times. The total prize after 100 heists, taking into account the cost of the ablution solution, is 3195.77E for 1644 actions at 1.94Epa.
Of course, you won’t always get a perfect heist, you might not draw the prize card, or you might be unlucky with other cards (higher tier lodgings help). I’ve been doing this with 3 card lodgings, and have got a lot of perfect runs, but also quite a few that take 18 or 19 actions. Let’s say that we average out to 18 actions per heist(quite conservative I would say). This then gets us an average of 1.73 Epa: still very decent, and greater than the affair of the box, similar to the fidgeting writer.
Of course, whilst on a heist, there is the possibility to snaffle documents: a highly profitable action if succesful, pretty costly if unsuccesful. It is currently at 57.35% on the spreadsheet, so that is 3.15 E each time you do it, if your luck is average. There are 18 cards (correct me if I’m wrong here) so assuming that you draw 7 cards each heist, its possibility of appearing is 38.9%. Failing here will require you to use another action to complete the heist, and will also require you to use your ablution solution sooner but maybe not seeing as it averages at 5.5 and we’re using it every 5 heists. We’ll assume it doesn’t affect that.
Thus, assuming you snaffle every time the card comes up, and assuming you never fail the heist (that would be bad) and keeping our average time to complete a heist at 18 actions, using an ablution solution every 5 heists, our epa comes to 1.78. If you could run the heist perfectly each time (maybe possible with 5 card lodgings) your epa would be 1.998.
I don’t really think any other carousel comes close to this one. The main weakness of this carousel however is the fact that you have to rely on opportunity cards, so it’s not ideal to do it in the morning like you would with many others.[/quote]
It’s pretty easy to run perfect Heists if you are an Exceptional Friend; you can spend 15 actions to gain, 10 or 11 Casing (I forget the exact amount), spend all the Casing over 5 on an Escape Route, 1 or 2 Keys, and 4 or 5 bits of Inside Information. That way, you never have to do the Dog or Spider cards ever. (Of course, it does help to have a 4 or 5 card Lodging, which I do). I’ve been doing a lot of Heists lately. The rewards are nice, but the boosts to Making Waves are even better.

I didn’t realize that a Searing Enigma was possible as a rare success on the cheap reward; thanks!

[quote=Sackville]I kept notes on 50 heists a while ago and I came out with 1.93 epa, which is pretty damn good (And ~66 actions/enigma, which I think might be the most efficient enigma grind).

Further notes: They were all done with a 5 card lodging and 10+ BDR. I averaged about 14 actions per heist, and I fed Appalling Secrets to a cat 35 times.

All that said, I still don’t prefer heists since a) you need to micromanage your opportunity deck to make the most out of it, since drawing cards one at a time is way more efficient and b) you miss out on a ton of London cards, so FW + the good London cards might be better epa over all (and even if it isn’t it’s hard to get scraps while heisting.)[/quote]

I use Appalling Secrets that way too, but trading on your Connections with the Duchess is as good, esp. if you have a LOT of Connected: The Duchess (mine is over 660).

[quote=Gerald Edgerton]For what it’s worth, cutting hard AWAY from ppa actually results in one of the more quickly sustainable sources of Waves. Item conversion carousel? Better be prepared to burn a lot of actions for an average of 2 CPs/action, although you’ll also see a diversely distributed 50 ppa as the result of all that shuffling. Opportunity cards? Probably your best bet, but will they come along at a pace not requiring you burn Salon/Orphanage CPs? Depends how much Notability you have going on. BDR aside, you need something like 70-90 CPs a week of MW not to simply shed a point. (This leaves aside that you’ll be at a 56 level handicap gaining that 15th Point, but that might just require calling on certain parties for help in addition to having awesome BDR.)

Interestingly, MW gain from Heists scales with Burglar’s Progress. <rest snipped> [/quote]

Now that is interesting; I was not aware of that but will now use that as much as I’m able. Thanks!
edited by cathyr19355 on 11/25/2015

[quote=Catherine Raymond]
It’s pretty easy to run perfect Heists if you are an Exceptional Friend; you can spend 15 actions to gain, 10 or 11 Casing (I forget the exact amount), spend all the Casing over 5 on an Escape Route, 1 or 2 Keys, and 4 or 5 bits of Inside Information. That way, you never have to do the Dog or Spider cards ever. (Of course, it does help to have a 4 or 5 card Lodging, which I do). I’ve been doing a lot of Heists lately. The rewards are nice, but the boosts to Making Waves are even better.[/quote]

I don’t think you need to be an Exceptional Friend, just a Person of Some Importance: Having run heists a fair bit, you can do 10 actions (via Gang of Hooligans) for 8 Casing. Use those to buy an Escape Route, 2 Inside Informations, and call it a day. If you’re wiling to take the straightforward +1 progress instead of the chancy options, you’ll can even get through a heist in 6 cards if you get very lucky.
(very mild spoilers on why I chose those options and not others relating to cards seen on a heist):

I think I’ve only ever seen 1 use for the Key, and there’s an Inside Information use available on the same card. I’d even dispense with the Escape Route as I’ve never used it for that purpose in my many heists except it’s a good way forward if you draw the correct card.

From another topic - did not want to derail the subject there (from another ongoing de-railination).

I wish to state that one can get above 2.0 echos in Heists. We are talking about the Baseborn heist, the lower tier of prize (sealed archive). I do this a lot:
9 actions to enter the Heist with Hoodlums and 1 Inside Information. 7 if without Inside Information (though this may hinder your progress later on and make you waste actions)
4-6 actions to make progress of 5 Cat points and exit the Heist (Using 5 card lodging, the inside information, Dreadful around 10, Intricate Kifers)
75% chance of getting 20 echos, 25% of getting 62.5 echos. 5.5 echos more if one chances snaffling documents!
That gives above the 2.0 echos. And a minimum of 10 MW. And 20 points of Shadowy (if one still needs it or lost them on the Nadir). And resets your opportunity cards back to 10 if you exit the heist with 4 or 5 cards left on the deck.
For a total of 15 actions (the maximum I wrote here, assuming a bad deck of cards and no documents stolen from the lady by the desk)
20*0.75 / 15 + 62.5 * 0.25/ 15 = 2 echos.
Do the Heists, boys and girls.
edited by Gonen on 1/22/2016

That part does require Exceptional Friendship though. Mundanely friendly players would often have more difficulty due to lower card storage and as such a smaller benefit from the deck resetting. (Though I’m pretty sure the reset to 10 only happens when at five cards; from what I can tell switching to areas with their own deck doubles the number of cards stored.)

[quote=xKiv][quote=Sackville]
So, uh, yeah. Heists are definitely competitive with a 1.57 epa grind, especially if you have the available time and patience to optimally manage your hand.[/quote]

Bah. Yet another apparently promising grind stomped to ground by AotB.
AotB superior.
AotBots transform and roll out![/quote]

What is AotB? This thread is very confusing

PPA? What’s that?
how do you get making waves from heists? Which heists, there are a lot of them. I’m doing big scores in the flit, and i don’t see much of whats being talked abnout

which carousel is this? which items are being converted here?

In order: Affair of the Box, a high-level shadowy carousel (that FYI has both criminal and lawful sides); Pence Per Action; Heists are separate from Big Scores and unlocked with A Name Whispered in Darkness 5; and repeatedly side-converting tier 3 items (such as Memories of Distant Shores, Zee-ztories, Memories of Light) all the way around for the bonus MW.

So is it being implied that AotB is the most efficient way to make money in the game? or just the most efficient shadowy method?

AotB is one of the most efficient money-making grinds in the whole game. It requires high Shadowy to avoid potential challenge failure, and there’s no dependency on cards.

Oh, and to be most profitable it requires siding with Revolutionaries against the Masters (at least temporarily).

I think there are only two other no-cards grinds which are sligytly more profitable (one is Date locked and requires becoming a spirifer; the other requires not advancing the University storyline too much).

That part does require Exceptional Friendship though. Mundanely friendly players would often have more difficulty due to lower card storage and as such a smaller benefit from the deck resetting. (Though I’m pretty sure the reset to 10 only happens when at five cards; from what I can tell switching to areas with their own deck doubles the number of cards stored.)[/quote]

You are right, of course. resetting deck to 10 if you are EF.
As for the second point - I THOUGHT it doubles your deck when exiting the heist (if 3 cards remaining - you reset it to 6. if 4 remains - reset to 8 etc). That is how it works when ENTERING the heist. But I was surprised to find out recently that I was reset back to 10 opportunity cards when completing the heist with only 4 cards! Triples them? Tried it twice with 4 cards unflipped on the deck when completed the deck and got a full 10 card deck back at London.
Someone willing to check this for me? (currently at Zea…)

Also - with the best of luck, one can have above 3 echos per heist! (completing the heists with 3 cards and one prize card - 4 actions. One card to use the Inside Information for 2 progress, one card to progress with 2 points using Kifer for 50% chance or those stairs for 75% chance and final card for snaffle documents with gain of 5.5 echos).
Happened to me, not plenty, but happened.
Sometimes luck is really against you and you go up to 18 actions…
The average is somewhere between 14-15 actions, sometimes with 5.5 echos for a bonus, sometimes minus 10 appalling secrets to gain progress.
Most of the time the gain is above 2 echos per action.
With the MW raise, shadowy raise and a good way to score searing enigmas for that Impossible Theorem,
AND it breaks the monotony of grinding CoC with war of assassins (and when you have a stock of 24 CoC, do you really wish to keep on grinding them?) - I highly recommend those heists.

Be advised - I am depicting a bright source for echos to the high tier players: Those who have 5-card lodging, Kifer, 100% success on Hoodlums, Dreadful around 10.
But I was pretty successful with those heist even when I had only 4-card lodgings, no Kifer and entered without Inside information (which today, after a revision of the Flit, is achieved by spending only 2 actions after using Hoodlums. Back then one could not use the extra CP on Hoodlums to get the Inside information AND use only one action to correct the Casing… back to level 5). So it is pretty sweet deal even for those who are not fully armed fully equipped fully nuclear.

In my point of view, VERY RECOMMENDED.

[quote=Parelle][quote=Catherine Raymond]
It’s pretty easy to run perfect Heists if you are an Exceptional Friend; you can spend 15 actions to gain, 10 or 11 Casing (I forget the exact amount), spend all the Casing over 5 on an Escape Route, 1 or 2 Keys, and 4 or 5 bits of Inside Information. That way, you never have to do the Dog or Spider cards ever. (Of course, it does help to have a 4 or 5 card Lodging, which I do). I’ve been doing a lot of Heists lately. The rewards are nice, but the boosts to Making Waves are even better.[/quote]

I don’t think you need to be an Exceptional Friend, just a Person of Some Importance: Having run heists a fair bit, you can do 10 actions (via Gang of Hooligans) for 8 Casing. Use those to buy an Escape Route, 2 Inside Informations, and call it a day. If you’re wiling to take the straightforward +1 progress instead of the chancy options, you’ll can even get through a heist in 6 cards if you get very lucky.
(very mild spoilers on why I chose those options and not others relating to cards seen on a heist):

I think I’ve only ever seen 1 use for the Key, and there’s an Inside Information use available on the same card. I’d even dispense with the Escape Route as I’ve never used it for that purpose in my many heists except it’s a good way forward if you draw the correct card.

You don’t NEED to be an Exceptional Friend to run heists, but if you are you have a max of 40 actions at a time, which makes it less painful to burn, say, 20+ of them just to get 11-12 Casing. I start with more Casing than I used to, because I’ve found that if you start with 4 Escape Routes, 4 Keys, and at least 5-6 Inside Informations, it’s pretty easy to get Burglar’s Progress up to 40-50 before ending the Heist, which should get you at least 4 levels of MW. (My main is doing a Heist right now, and has Burglar’s Progress at 51; we’ll see how I can grind it before I have to give up and take my plunder without getting caught.) :-)

The only other two no-cards or RNG grind, maybe. It’s hard to get an exact number for it, but the Fidgeting Writer grind is definitely up there too.

[quote=Gonen]You are right, of course. resetting deck to 10 if you are EF.
As for the second point - I THOUGHT it doubles your deck when exiting the heist (if 3 cards remaining - you reset it to 6. if 4 remains - reset to 8 etc). That is how it works when ENTERING the heist. But I was surprised to find out recently that I was reset back to 10 opportunity cards when completing the heist with only 4 cards! Triples them? Tried it twice with 4 cards unflipped on the deck when completed the deck and got a full 10 card deck back at London.
Someone willing to check this for me? (currently at Zea…)[/quote]

Just finished a heist with four cards and it did indeed fill my deck right to 10! I’m out of actions for now but tomorrow I’ll see what happens with three cards remaining.

Aaaand leaving with three cards also refilled it to 10. Weird.

Here’s my theory: anything over 3 cards would have filled it to 6 which is “max” normally - I can affirm that 2 goes to 4 and my 3 goes 6. But perhaps the code reads “max” instead of a number so the rest of you exceptional people get 10.