Ballet & The Wakeful Eye: Best Grind EPA?

Fallen London
1

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, &quotThe Lead&quot (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 &quotThe Lead&quot 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

2

I’ll add: unlike the Port Carnelian grind, this allows you to visit the Cave Of The Nadir, draw cards in London, and collect weekly payments (with the possible exception of one week at the Court Of The Wakeful Eye). And generally it lets you conduct other business as needed.
edited by Ginneon Thursday on 3/19/2018

3

Interesting, this seems indeed a good candidate for a new baseline grind - I would not call it &quotBest EPA&quot, that honor is reserved for the more exotic things, but it is an excellent baseline replacement for AotB. I especially like that it provides 0.5 MW per action too, meaning it is a decent help for pushing notability.

I’d add that one does not have to wait a year for this to become profitable, selling orphans to tigers and cashing in tribute is a really profitable option mostly limited by liquidity, in combination with this it means the actions for travelling to the court become negligible much sooner.
edited by Achanei on 3/19/2018

4

Ah, yes, the title should have been “Best Grind.”

Good points on Making Waves and the Orphan option.

5

It’s a fair grind for staying mostly in London. If you’re going to go to the Court of the Wakeful Eye anyway, you’re better off turning Winsome Orphans into Tribute and using that. The catch, of course, is that the orphans grind requires money upfront to get started, whereas this just requires an investment of actions.

6

Indeed, simply buying Orphans, trading them for Tribute, then cashing in at the Court of the Wakeful Eye is a straight 2.22 EPA, not counting the zee trip (which is significantly better than the proposed ~1.7 EPA).

So creating Ballets is fine if you’re going for becoming A Poet Laureate anyway. If you just want an efficient echo-grind, definitely use Orphans over this.

edited by dov on 3/20/2018

7

Honestly, that grind doesn’t even require much money to be worthwhile. You only need 1500 echoes of orphans to surpass the 1.722 EPA proposed here, which is under a week of dedicated grinding, and every cycle gives back 20% more money than you put in.

The main issue with the Tribute grind is that you can’t access the Nadir, get your professional payment, or collect Trade Secrets. As such the best strategy is a two week loop: arrive in London before your TtH, collect payment and visit the Nadir, repeat once TtH comes, then set sail again and wait two weeks. Unless you have a truly preposterous amount of money when you start, you can also just stay in London for longer to build up tribute again. It’s one action trading in orphans for every five cashing in overseas.

(The weirdest thing about the Tribute grind is it makes so many cards suddenly useless. Before now, anything above 1.75 EPA was worth playing, but now it has to be at least 2.22 EPA to matter.)

8

[quote=Optimatum]As such the best strategy is a two week loop: arrive in London before your TtH, collect payment and visit the Nadir, repeat once TtH comes, then set sail again and wait two weeks. Unless you have a truly preposterous amount of money when you start, you can also just stay in London for longer to build up tribute again. It’s one action trading in orphans for every five cashing in overseas.[/quote]What do you think the &quotoptimal&quot amount of Tribute for this cycle is?

I just tried it out recently with 6000 Tribute, and it was about 10 days from when I left London to when I returned. I was thinking that I could get through 7000 next time, but then I thought about the actions I’d have to put into exchanging Orphans for Tribute. 7000 Tribute from Orphans is about two days worth of actions (280), and exchanging 7000 Tribute to the Ministers takes ~11 days, which cuts it kind of close considering travel there and back, plus actions to get weekly payment, Nadir, etc.

I may have answered my own question, but I was just wondering how much Tribute everyone else shoots for in one of these two week cycles.

9

[quote=dov]If you just want an efficient echo-grind, definitely use Orphans over this.[/quote]Ah, I see! Thank you, friends, for saving me from myself.

10

It was a very well-constructed analysis and calculation.

11

[quote=dov]It was a very well-constructed analysis and calculation.[/quote]Ha, thank you! I’ll leave it here because, really, who wants to surrender an army of orphans to tigers just to optimise their return on investment?

[Listens]

Oh…everyone?

12

If FB going to nerf that grind i hope they announce it in advance.

13

It’s doubtful they will. It’s not particularly overpowered and requires a large investment to really be profitable. I suspect it’s not worthwhile except to cider/heptagoat grinders who are already near the end, and people who just need night whispers/searing enigmas/primaeval hints.

14

Still, it’s even better than grind which unlocks by Cider. 25 echoes + 10 Nightmares CP per 11 actions

15

I’m not doing it optimally, but I’ve been running 2000-2500 Tribute. I prefer being in London and prefer the peace of mind of not cutting it close with keeping MW up to maintain Notability. Also I want to put some time into grinds that aren’t money-based. Those 777 Surprise Packages aren’t going to accumulate themselves.[li]

16

Before the community spreadsheet got deleted, I recorded at least 500 actions in “The Lead” and got ~10% chance of a rare success, so you can probably safely include that in your calculations.