I don’t presently have access to any imaginary clubs, with or without nonexistent rules. I’ve been worried it would be detrimental to join in such pastimes.
Man, this makes me feel awkward because I got my RBH Reservation through unendingly grinding jade at the Games Tent in Mrs. Plenty’s Carnival.
Hey, don’t judge me!
Using Fidgeting Writer is not an easy way to build up Antique Mysteries. (It could end up being the quickest or the slowest way, depending on your luck.)
If we assume the odds are 71/71/71/61, then (on average), you’re going to need 116 Tales of Terror to start, then 82 Visions of the Surface, 116 Correspondence Plaques and 82 Brilliant Souls to make it through the next steps. On average. Reality is likely to diverge from this, perhaps substantially.
Here’s a few of the options you have:
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Convert Jade (589 actions). You’ll need 58,000 Jade Fragments, which will cost 484 actions using Unfinished Business (assuming Dangerous 154+ with gear; more actions if it’s less). You’ll then spend 105 actions converting up the chain. Depending on what your Dangerous is, you’ll also earn 9+ levels of Dangerous while doing this.
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Fidgeting Writer (547+ actions). This assumes you’re using ‘Well-planned villainy’ to build up Casing and Thefts of Particular Character to steal the components you need. I’m only counting the actions needed for the items you’ll use (e.g., you steal Brilliant Souls in batches of 25, but I’m only counting 82% of what it will cost to steal 100), and obviously not taking into account items you already have, so the actual number of actions you will need will differ, even before we take into account the wild fluctuations caused by the luck checks.
The actual Fidgeting Writer parts will only cost ~322 actions; the rest is my estimate of what it will cost to build up the needed components. For the sake of your sanity, you’re better off doing this a stage at a time (e.g., all the Tales of Terror you’re going to spend, then do all of the Senses of Déjà Vu you’ve acquired, and so on).
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Thefts of Particular Character (~590 actions). You could just cut out the middleman and use ‘Well-planned villainy’ to build up Casing and then steal the Antique Mysteries.
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Thefts of Particular Character, Slower Variation (~724 actions). Alternatively, you use ‘Formulate a plan’ to build up Casing, using equipment to keep your Shadow at 114. This will take longer because of failures, but you’ll also gain 25 levels worth of Shadowy while grinding Casing.
The bottom line is that the one-two punch of the Broad difficulty system and making all Casing options cost 3 actions accomplishes what appears to have been the goal of slowing down advancement and item acquisition. Sorry. :(
If you want to gamble, going with Fidgeting Writer may get you lodgings the quickest (particularly if you already have some of the components needed). However, I consider Shadowy the most important stat in the game, so taking the longer route may be worth it.
Of course, you can always wait until your chances of success are guaranteed (Shadowy 185), which drops the actions needed to ~494, but given that the new difficulty system effectively decreases the rate of leveling by 40+%, that’s likely a ways off.
edited by Tesuji on 4/17/2013
It’s really not that bad. As long as you don’t have a form people will leave you alone, and even after you choose a form you probably won’t get pestered too often.
@OPG- I won’t judge. I’m currently grinding for an Overgoat using less than optimal ppa because I want to acquire Certifiable Scraps while I’m doing it. ^^
It’s bad, especially if you’re also opening what may or may not be boxed cats! I don’t know what will kill me first these days…opening a box or being stabbed in the gut. This is an incredibly frightening period of life for my character.
Hilariously the box spiders are more threatening than hooligans in the street with knives. Unless of course you’re being faced with a great number of hooligans, which is entirely possible. I wish your character the best of luck in avoiding an inconvenient boat trip.
I guess at least if I went on the boat I’d get to play some more chess. I feel like the boatman and I have REALLY started to play now. He concedes a lot, though.
So far, using only what I already have in my inventory, I’ve turned 24 Tales into 19 Senses, and 19 senses into 16 Glimpses of something larger. Once I’ve used up what I already have, I’ll probably switch to Thefts of a Particular Character. Right now my Gear is the only thing that gets my shadowy above 100, and I want to fix that. I’ll keep you posted on my results.
Ooh, what are you grinding on?
The invite option under Potentially Dangerous in your Lodgings. It gives 45 Surface Currency and 1 Certifiable Scrap if you succeed (it’s a Pretty Good Odds action), and 20 Surface Currency for failure. You send the invites to people who aren’t currently playing, but I wouldn’t recommend sending them to your Twitter/FB friends repeatedly. Instead I just made an account to send invites to, and tell my friends about Fallen London if I think they’d be into it. :)
Update: 16 Glimpses into 12 Deals with the Devil This took 17 actions, however, as I had to convert prayers into 6 correspondence plaques.
EDIT: 12 Deals converted into 8 Room Numbers at the Royal Beth.
edited by Finvara on 4/19/2013
I haven’t gotten that far, but what about breeding in the fourth coil of the labyrinth for journals of infamy and then converting them sideways to vision s of the surface (for other players, not finvara) and then up to bazaar permits, or over to mysteries of the elder continent for finvara- and then up to antique mysteries.
This post suggests that you can acquire 62 journals of infamy in 20 actions breeding tomb-lions.
http://community.failbettergames.com/topic804-an-indepth-look-at-money-options.aspx
I’m guessing that is optimistic.
“Dear Zee Dee, Are you enjoying the game thus far? I’d send you a candle, but all I appear to have are knives. cheers, Guy”
Update: I was finally done in by a box trapped with knives. x_x
I’ve filled up my social calendar for the next day or two. I feel an irresistible urge to take a mellow little boat trip outside the city. waves farewell hanky
Best of luck with the Manager, Finvara.
For what it’s worth my advice has always been not to grind until you’re stat capped as there will be plenty of grind to come. enjoy what’s new while it’s new and don’t get burned out.
That said, I’ll let you know how the conversion of 15,000 Tales of Terror goes.
I’m not doing horribly, really, I got 16 Antique Mysteries out of those without much effort, and while I was doing so I finally got the opportunity cards I was waiting for, the REASON I was bothering to take time grinding at all. I’m going to be pausing my housing ambitions long enough to replace a few things I seem to have run out of in the process of producing a bifurcated owl, horses and soforth, you understand. After that, I really think my future endeavors shall benefit from a 4-card living space, so I’ll probably resume acquisition of antique mysteries quite soon. Getting Stat Capped is lovely, I’m sure, but grinding while it provides a benefit seems more useful. Once I hit the stat cap again, I shall probably devote my time to maximum ppa acquisition. I have wanted a goat for years. It’s honestly the first thing that enticed me to play.
EDIT: I’ve read that thread before, and the idea of grinding tomb lions would be tempting, but I’m not so sure how workable it is to organize the suggested scandal engine with other players. If anyone has experience with this, I’d love to hear about it, in thread or in PM, either one.
edited by Finvara on 4/19/2013
There’s a thread on the Fidgeting Writer gamble, and there’s been a ton of data on the first few steps. I’ll be running some numbers on it, and posting the results there.
EDIT: Link here: http://community.failbettergames.com/topic376-the-fidgeting-writer–doing-the-maths-spoilers.aspx?Page=3#post26433
Using the data from there, the success rate from converting Tales to Mysteries is 22.614±1.796%, 95% of the time. You’ll need 25 Room Numbers, which should take you between 102 to 120 Tales.
edited by Nagato-01 on 4/19/2013
One thing that is clear is that tomb lions aren’t very profitable if you have to lower your Scandal through opportunity cards.
The rest of my Antique Mysteries were gained by drinking unfinished business on Watchmaker Hill and converting the Jade up in large amounts. Now I have a permanent reservation.