Back of the napkin calculations:
Assuming no subscribtion, if you beeline for second plot capability (takes more than a week), buy all three agents, and run highest EpA plots after that, the whole thing pays for itself roughly in five weeks (total expenses around 800e including actions valued at 6e, assumed EpA per plot is 0.13)
Another calculation:
Assuming you play 700 actions per week (and sleep well), running two plots will generate ~180e. Pretty similar to Bone Zone Exhaustion. But much less than Ratket bonus. For low engagement players (20-40 actions per day) itās pretty bad though, comparable to weekly gift from Balmoral, but requires much more brain cycles / attention.
I realized that you should be careful before spending Echoes to procure duplicate items for your Agentsā outfits.
E.g. I recently bought a second Leviathan-Leather Valise (75ā¬ equivalent) to increase the Luckless Captainās success chances from 90% to 100% on A Consignment without Contract.
However, I now realized that this only increases the Plotās EpA from 0.095 to 0.1, which means that the purchase would pay for itself in 1500 Actions.
Unfortunately Iām unlikely to ever spend so many Actions with the Captain on this Plot, since Iām going to switch to other Plots with better EpA long before that.
I guess the lesson is: donāt pass the opportunity to get cheap duplicates during events or story progression.
Dunno. The difference in EpA between the plots is so small, so Iāam considering going for a diversity of assets rather than pure EpA. 0.03 does not matter that much when your base grind is around 6, and card options are even better.
Iāll confess to finding it somewhat amusing that a new game feature designed (I posit) in part to address our over-abundance of unused items is simply driving us to now acquire duplicates of said items, such that our originals may remain unused and on stand-by for the occasional need. Perhaps the real design goal was to reinvigorate every festival and activity such that we are now motivated to fully engage them multiple times?
Well, I think Iāll just bail with acquiring second (or even third and fourth?!) copies of non-Fate BiS items. Itās a ridiculous and quite boring endevour with incredibly minuscule gains. I donāt want to ever grind for some minion getting maybe 5-10 more Dangerous to give me 0.005 more EpA, thereās too many good stories to play throughā¦
Maybe not strictly necessary, but itās also a matter of how many clicks are you willing to do to receive the rewards from agent plots. And what you describe itās a lot of clicks. With some server lags, this outfit changing operation might take up to 5-10 min, which IMO is ridiculous.
Maybe itās just that Iāve been playing this game for over a decade, but I have so many redundant weaker items that I would never have any call to equip myself that I am not particularly feeling the need to acquire duplicates of anything. Like, the Midnight Matriarch of the Menagerie of Roses gives an excellent 12 Watchful, but with an Ubergoat on hand, I would feel perfectly safe assigning it to an agent permanently. I have literally hundreds of equipment items that fall into this category.
Indeed! But try to cancel their task and see more!
While 0.13 is 30% bigger than 0.1, I strongly doubt the role of this new addition is to help with the purchase of end-game items. Itās not just an old thing with bigger items and I appreciate the effort FBG poured into it. Especially this can branch out in multiple directions depending on our feedback.
A saint with itchy fingers? Maybe a new agent will help scratch that. While the zee is dangerous and piracy isnāt for an agent, I am certain I wasnāt the only one that wanted some kind of different missions. Bored to click with alts for second chances? Maybe an agent will be of use. You get the gist.
Itās a very cool new mechanics where, as hwoosh mentioned, decades old neat items fit somewhere again! I ADORE my new companions!
I also have lots of unused items for main stats, but I have few spares for advanced skills like Zeefaring so I had to do some shopping.
If I were crazy, I would also consider buying a second Ćbergoat for the Watchful check on the Naval Intelligence Plot, since a spare +10 Companion isnāt sufficient to reach 100% successā¦
I mentioned what happens in the other thread (my captain failed the first short outing for inadequate equipment) ā you lose the venture. No cost, and of course you would have played anyway, so no loss of moves.
Iāve reconsidered my previous assessment of the Consignment Plot. On average, it gives one Strong-Backed Labour per Plot plus 5.5ā¬ in other goods.
If I compare this to the payout of the other Plots I could be running instead, Iām basically paying an opportunity cost of 4-6ā¬ per SBL, which is competitive with hiring SBLs in the Clay Quarters.
I guess that I might run Consignments as long as I have a steady need for SBLs to fuel palaeontological digs in Ealing.
I donāt really have a use for any of the other payouts, so for my second Plot Iāll just run whatever gives the highest EpA. Iām currently leaning into Zailors, Astray because the Puzzling Map payout can be boosted at the Rat Market, either by upconverting to Salt-Steppe Atlases to buy Crackling Devices, or by combining the Maps into Chimerical Archives.
I can now have two agents working at the same timeā¦ but it was quite expensive to enable this.
I have used up these:
1x Searing Enigma
1x Puzzling Map
1x Queen Mate
1x Favour in High Places
1x Comprehensive Bribe
1x Rookery Password
1x Blackmail Material
1x Presbyterate Passphrase
1x Cellar of Wine
1x Bottle of Fourth City Airag: Year of the Tortoise
1x Cave-Aged Code of Honour
1x Vital Intelligence
These, in addition to the resources spent on recruiting those agents. They better haul back some nice stuff from the zee!
I donāt have Chimerical Archive, I didnāt go that far at Moulin.
Right, so thatās the second best EPA, for people who donāt have the third plot slot. But if youāre an Exceptional Friend, itās worse, with third best EPA being 0.120 according to wiki.
300 / 0.120 = 2500 Actions
Thatās about 3-4 weeks of playing, not great, not horrible.
