I think I’ve found a better grind than the Affair Of The Box:
It consists of returning to Court, performing ballets, accumulating Tribute, and then cashing it in at the Court Of The Wakeful Eye with a minister. A couple of prerequisites: you’ve progressed with the Dilmun Club enough to have access to a minister at the Court of the Wakeful Eye, you’ve been kicked out and restored to Court in the Shuttered Palace, and you have at least 167 Persuasive.
Let’s say we’re saving up 60 Tribute to trade in at the CotWE. Here’s the arithmetic:
The ministers give an option to trade in 20 Tribute for 62.5E. For 60 Tribute, we get 187.5E (3*62.5E).
Each Carnelian Work in the Shuttered Palace gives 3 Tribute, so 20 Carnelian Works will give us our 60 Tribute (320). At 30E/ballet, we get 600E (2030E).
I’m using 20 actions to complete the work with the reliable option, "The Lead" (100% straightforward with 167 Persuasive). Add in 2 more actions to choose the ballet & to perform it and we have 22 actions.
I usually complete 1.5 ballets before business takes me elsewhere in Fallen London, but let’s assume we’re spending 1 action each ballet to return to court, putting us at 23 actions per ballet, or 460 actions for 20 ballets.
(While not necessary for the grind, you may as well become Poet-Laureate while you’re at it. This calculation, though, assumes you’re finished spending actions on increasing these levels.)
I’m estimating 40 actions round trip for the zee voyage there and back (I’ve seen this number on the forum before, but feel free to correct me on this), and 12 actions to trade in Tribute with a minister (4 actions for each exchange).
So all told we have 512 actions for 787.5E, or about 1.538 EPA.
Not bad. But it gets better the less frequently we visit the CotWE.
Let’s assume we’re still doing a leisurely 23 actions per ballet, only now it’s over the course of about a year. Let’s say 100 actions/day for 361 days spent on ballets, so we’re working with 36,100 actions. That yields about 1569 ballets (36100/23), 47070E (30E1569), and 4707 Tribute (31569).
Add in 40 actions for one Zee voyage. 4700 Tribute gives us 235 trade-ins with the ministers (4700/20=235), taking 940 actions (4235) to do the trade-ins, yielding 14687.5E (62.5E235).
So in this hypothetical longterm grind we’ve spent 37080 actions (36100+40+940), yielding 61757.5E (47070+14687.5), giving us about a 1.6655 EPA (61757.5E/37080) (that’s rounding down).
On its face, the advantage over the Affair Of The Box might not look like much (1.64 vs. 1.6655), but there’s plenty of room to improve it. Completing two ballets every trip to court brings the actions cost down to 22.5 actions/ballet, making 1604 ballets possible in 36,100 actions. That raises ballet echoes to 48120E and Tribute to 4812, giving 240 trade-ins at the CotWE, worth 15000E (at the cost of an extra 20 actions). So that’s 63120E total in 37100 actions, or 1.701 EPA (rounding down).
And that doesn’t account for the Rare success on the Lead option that gives an extra 0.24E. Based on how frequently I’ve seen it, I’m guessing it has a 10% chance (I didn’t want to include it in calculations earlier in case that frequency is off, but I feel pretty good about it). Over 1604 ballets, that gives us 32080 chances for the rare success to fire (20 "The Lead" actions1604). That means about 3208 Rare Successes (3208010%), netting 769.92E (0.24E*3208).
So our aggressive 2 ballets/court trip grind actually gives a total of 63889.92E (63120E+769.92E), or 1.722EPA (63889.9E/37100). This works out to an extra 753.12E on the more leisurely 23 actions/ballet course, bumping those Echoes up to 62510.62E (61757.5+753.12), making that EPA 1.6858 (62510.62E/37080). Even on the trial run where we’re just trading in 60 Tribute, this gives us an extra 40E, yielding a 1.6162 EPA (827.5E/512).
Alternatively, the ballet can be streamlined with with favours and honey, probably giving an even better EPA. Spending 960 actions in the CotWE should only take a little longer than a week, so that’s only missing one weekly profession payment.
BOTTOM LINE:
Carnelian Ballets + CotWE trade-ins over the course of a year can yield 1.722 EPA (probably better when favours are factored in).
Can anyone see any holes in this?
edited by Ginneon Thursday on 3/20/2018